The main goal with this paper is to motivate and coin a
variation of literate programming which we call elucida￾tive programming. Elucidative programming is oriented
towards program explanation with the purpose of throw￾ing lights on important and complex program relationships.
Since proposed by Knuth in 1984, literate programming has
been one of the most viable approaches to a radical im￾provement of internal program documentation. Unfortu￾nately, most programmers find the ideas of literate program￾ming, as supported by WEB-like tools, for impractical, aca￾demic, and far-fetched in relation to current programming
practices. With elucidative programming we intend to focus
on the best ideas of literate programming. We disregards
the aspects of publishing programs as technical literature,
and we provide for mechanisms with which documentation
can be added to a program without affecting or disturbing
the source program. Our ideas about elucidative program￾ming are presented as a number of requirements, and in a
discussion of programming environment issues in relation
to the new ideas.