A Modular Plugin Architecture for Literate Programming Editors

The CodeChat plugin transforms source code into a web page, allowing the programmer to view their source code as a descriptive document by adding headings, formatting, hyperlinks, diagrams, and images. However, this plugin requires the use of a little-known text editor, Enki. To broaden CodeChat's impact, this project presents the creation of a modular plug-in architecture for CodeChat, enabling its use with a Visual Studio Code. This approach bridges the services CodeChat provides, which are written in the Python programming language, to the variety of programming languages which various text editors require. To accomplish this, this project employs Apache Thrift, which provides scalable cross-language service development; develops a CodeChat server to provide the needed services; and creates a JavaScript plugin client for Visual Studio Code, a free and popular cross-platform text editor.