<p>What type of authentication would you suggest for the service that is:</p>

<ul>
<li>implemented as WCF and exposed via
varios enpoints (including XML-RPC)</li>
<li>has to be consumed easily by various cross-platform clients</li>
</ul>

<p>Why?</p>

<p>Options that I'm aware of are:</p>

<ul>
<li>Forms-based authentication for IIS-hosted WCF (easy to implement, but has horrible cross-platform support, plus it is not REST)</li>
<li>Sending plain-text username/pwd with every call (easy to use on any platform, but totally unsecure)</li>
<li>Using ticket-based authentication, when username&amp;pwd are used to create a ticket that is valid for some time and is passed with every request (can be consumed by any client easily, but the API model is bound to this type of security)</li>
</ul>

<p>Thanks for your time!</p>

Literate Programming works its best if the generated intermediate code can point back to the original source file to allow debugging, and analyzing compiler errors.  This usually means pre processor support, which Java doesn't support.
Additionally Literate Programming is really not necessary for Java, as the original need for a strict sequential order - which was what prompted Knuth to write a tool to put snippets together in the appropriate sequence - is not present.    The final benefit of literate programming, namely being able to write prose about the code, is also available as Javadoc which allow you to put everything in as comments.
To me, there is no benefit in literate programming for Java, and only troubles (just imagine getting IDE support).
Any particular reason you are considering it?