Issues with literate programming DSSSL Script

[MARK.WROTH@xxxxxxxxxxx (Wroth, Mark)]

Having gotten myself interested in trying to write a literate programming
system in SGML/DSSSL (as a proof of concept and DSSSL learning exercise,
possibly eventually leading to a usable tool), I've run into a couple of
issues that I'd like to appeal to the collective wisdom of the list to help
me address.

The "weave" part of the problem is basically an ordinary DSSSL style sheet;
I can see some things I don't know how to do, but it all seems within the
ordinary tasks DSSSL was designed to handle.

The "tangle" side is a bit trickier. My basic approach is to use the SGML
backend to make system entities (using the Jade extension "entity" flow
object).  Now my questions arise.

First: is there any way to couple some reasonable SGML and DSSSL to produce
a literal "<" in the output SGML entity?  Jade appears to want to "quote"
(as &#60; IIRC) the character whether I include it as a literal in the
document instance or as an entity definition.  So far the only though I've
had is to define an empty element <lt> or to post-process the output file.
Is there some other approach?

Second: I need to collect all of the connected scrap definitions.  Selecting
them as a node-list and then processing the list seems a reasonable
approach.  However, I can't tell from the specification if I can guarantee
that order is preserved when I select the nodes (i.e. that the selected
node-list will have the nodes in the same order as they occur in the
document instance).  Is this in fact guaranteed?


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