Example: I want to explain the role of various files in the development directory. I start with a couple files; then I describe a command that creates a third file. And then I do this several more times, filling up the directory.

It wold be nice to show the starting list of files, a command, and the resulting list of files. It would also be nice to maybe color-code source and target files for each step, both in the command and in the listing. It may also help to typographically distinquish base files that are written by hand and generated ones. A few pictograms to tell apart files and directories would also be useful.

And it would be nice to somehow keep this a single process so that a command references a source state and produces the target state and the list of files is computed automatically.

(Doing this right now with XML and XSLT, targeting PDF via XSL-FO. Drew pictograms in SVG right in the XSLT. Haven't got to the automatic part yet, just got an idea that this is a natural way to go.)