How to extract readable source code from a .web file?

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I'm trying to dig into the source for Donald Knuth's Metafont compiler. However, I am getting bogged down in his toolchain. What is the best way to extract the Pascal source code from one of Knuth's .web files? I am toying with doing a reimplementation in another language, and I want to look some at the geometric algorithms, etc... so I have some idea what I am getting into.

The .web -> .tex -> .dvi route left me with a huge document without an index, that is terribly slow to render, at least in evince.

The .web -> .p file resulted in source code that was stripped of all comments, and deliberately packed without any consideration for readability.

Should I start messing around with pascal pretty printers? Use a pascal-> C converter like modern latex does and then pretty print and explore that?

asked 46 secs ago

Andrew Wagner

2,178

How to extract readable source code from a .web file?