Thank you, Greg, this is certainly a logical suggestion, but I didn’t explain why I would have these blocks in individual files - I will explain very quickly here.

Basically I am developing my Lisp code using the ASDF package manager and so I have a few different files in a source tree. I haven’t been able to fully work with Donald Knuth’s suggestion of writing a Literate Program directly in a tool like orgmode/noweb since it is a nuisance to keep having to type C-c ' to go into the editing mode of the language concerned.

I also tend to use a mindmapping tool (MindNode on my Mac in my case) since with some specific genetic mental issues I do better with a visual outline than the standard ones even the flexible offering in orgmode itself. I’m fine once I’ve done the brainstorming, and I then will export to OPML and use Pandoc to get an orgmode file.

But what I wanted to do was to insert Javadoc style comments into my Lisp in my original code and I would label each entry with the name of the source code block which also gets named <name>.org in a flat folder.

For example

;;;——
;;; metrics_graph
;;; ——
;;; Textual essay paragraphs
;;; ——
(defun nothing () nil)
;;;——

The above is in metrics_graph.org (http://metrics_graph.org)

All these generated files are styled as a very simple markdown file so that I can read this into MindNode and have a bunch of nodes named with the names of the org snippets as I have called them (confusingly as "snippet" has a different connotation most often).

With these mechanics I can write my Lisp code as I have done for years but I can also have it easily translated into a set of Nodes in MindNode that I can move around graphically with a mouse and create my Literate Program.

Ultimately I have just decided that I will develop my code as normal and then finally just copy and paste it into orgmode especially since now we can select a region and and create a source block around it.

So taking a Lisp file and formatting it for orgmode is not a huge burden - then I will be able to tangle it and I will just then continue to work from the org file if I need to edit and debug the code later on. It just means I will take the code to near completion before trying to work with a Literate Program but I do hope to start using Babel for documenting my work even though I am no longer working in a research setting per se.

Thanks to all for your suggestions - Doom seems a reasonable option - but I will try them all as best I can - I am on my second all nighter though so need some sleep first!

Cheers.

Rama

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> On Wednesday, Apr 14, 2021 at 4:23 am, Greg Minshall <minshall@umich.edu (mailto:minshall@umich.edu)> wrote:
> Rama,
>
> another possible solution, though it may not be possible for your setup,
> is to "invert" things: centralize all your snippets in snippet.org, with
> each *snippet* set to tangle to its individual lisp file.
>
> cheers, Greg