Welcome to the Pretzel Homepage

Overview

About Pretzel
Pretzel in 5 sentences.
Finished Work on Pretzel
See the system requirements for installing Pretzel and get the most recent Pretzel distribution with a simple click.
Current Work on Pretzel
Check out the current work on the Pretzel system (includes the noweb extensions to Pretzel).
Copying Conditions
Pretzel is free of charge and is released under the GNU General Public License.

What's new?

Jason Alexander has ported Pretzel 2.0l to Win95.
Revision 2.0n of Pretzel is ready, which includes a major bug fix kindly pointed out to me by David Wilson. If you have an earlier version you should upgrade!
Revision 2.0i of Pretzel is out now and includes an enhanced version of the noweb facilities with Pretzel. Prettyprinting filters for noweb are now more robust in that they use standard noweb verbatim output if the prettyprinter fails to do his work. If you're using noweb you should upgrade.
Note that I am leaving university soon and that the safest way to reach me will be via email at
fcg@acm.org
Revision 2.0h of Pretzel features minor bug fixes, but you should upgrade, since the documentation has been enhanced (see section on finished work on Pretzel for more details).
There's a good prettyprinter available for Java (see page on noweb extensions), comments welcome.

What is Pretzel?

Pretzel is a program that generates a prettyprinter module from a formal description of the way a certain language should be prettyprinted. A prettyprinter is a function or program that rearranges source code to enhance its readability. Prettyprinters generated by pretzel output LaTeX source code that can be used within your own documents. NB that pretzel produces modules, not programs! It also includes features to make Pretzel prettyprinters suitable for any target typesetter you like, they may even produce HTML output.

Finished Work on Pretzel

Prerequisites

The current official Pretzel release version is 2.0n. (You may have a look at it's diary.) It runs on UNIXisch like machines and has been tested under HP-UX, AIX RS6000 and Linux platforms. Jason Alexander has ported Version 2.0l to Windows 95.

For version 2.0 you'll also need up-to-date executable versions of:

A version of Norman Ramsey's noweb literate programming system.)
flex, the GNU fast lexical analyser generator (at least version 2.4.6, you can find it here).
Bison, the GNU Parser generator (at least version 1.19, which you can find here).

Where to get Pretzel?

Pretzel can be fetched through the WWW at http://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/BS/Gaertner/pretzel/code. The Win95 port of Pretzel can be found at Jason Alexander's Homepage.

Documentation

The Pretzel distribution is fully documented and contains manual pages for pretzel(1) and pretzel-it(1), as well as a full blown 60 page user's manual called ``The Pretzelbook''. An FAQ is currently compiled.

Current Work on Pretzel

As the bulk of work on release 2.0 has finished now, the current work includes support and small enhancments to improve portability and remove minor bugs. See the project diary for the latest information. You may also browse the development site if you wish.

There is a collection of files that might be useful to people using Norman Ramsey's noweb system. Check out the extra page on this issue.

Copying Conditions

    Pretzel v.2.0, the language independent prettyprinter
    generator is copyright (C) 1994-98 by Felix Gärtner.

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Last update: 29 January 1999

Felix Gärtner (fcg@acm.org)