Pictures in source code

[mcdougal@cs.uchicago.edu (Tom McDougal)]

"A picture is worth a thousand words," so the saying goes.
Here is number 1 on my Xmas wish-list for almost every programming 
environment: the ability to combine pictures with source code, 
especially for documentation.  Do other people wish for this, too?

Just as MS Word treats PICs as characters, I'd like to be able
to write a comment containing a picture:

;;;  <pic goes here>  (in lisp)

or

(* <pic goes here> *)  (in pascal)

You get the idea.

I have thought of using something like Nissus, which stores pictures
and formatting info in the resource fork, leaving the data fork as
pure (executable) text, but it's generally preferable to stay within
the programming environment.

I suppose this is a difficult thing to implement, or it would have
appeared already, but I hope the programming tools gods will find
a way to do it, Someday.

Thanks.

------------------------------------
Tom McDougal           mcdougal@cs.uchicago.edu 

        	1951, Roland Cleebens, football coach,
        	calls his team together but has trouble
        	making ends meet.