[Python-3000] [Python-Dev] Finishing up PEP 3108 (original) (raw)

Georg Brandl g.brandl at gmx.net
Sat May 31 17:33:38 CEST 2008

Brett Cannon schrieb:

Issue 2873 - htmllib is slated to go, but pydoc still uses it. Then again, pydoc is busted thanks to the new doc format.

I will try to handle this in the coming week. Fred had the interesting suggestion of removing pydoc in Py3K based on the thinking that documentation tools like pydoc should be external to Python. With the docs now so easy to generate directly, should pydoc perhaps just be gutted to only what is needed for help() to work?

pydoc is fine for displaying docstring help, and interactive help. This should stay.

Of course, it would also be nice for help("if") to work effortlessly, which it currently only does if the generated HTML documentation is available somewhere, which it typically isn't -- on Unix most distributions put it in a separate package (from which pydoc won't always find it of its own), on Windows only the CHM file is distributed and must be decompiled to get single HTML files.

Now that the docs are reST, the source is almost pretty enough to display it raw, but I could also imagine a "text" writer that removes the more obscure markup to present a casual-reader-friendly text version.

The needed sources could then be distributed with Python -- it shouldn't be more than about 200 kb.

Georg

-- Thus spake the Lord: Thou shalt indent with four spaces. No more, no less. Four shall be the number of spaces thou shalt indent, and the number of thy indenting shall be four. Eight shalt thou not indent, nor either indent thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to four. Tabs are right out.

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