[Python-Dev] docs.python.org pointing to Python 3 by default? (original) (raw)

Chris Angelico rosuav at gmail.com
Sun May 20 01:38:26 CEST 2012

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 4:43 AM, Glyph <glyph at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:

Right now, e.g. <http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html> directly renders a page.  I suggest that this be changed to a redirect to <http://docs.python.org/release/2.7/tutorial/index.html>.  The fact that people can bookmark the "default" version of a document is kind of a bug.

I'm -1 on that; unless there's a strong reason to avoid it, bookmarking the "default" version seems like the right thing to me. (One example of a strong reason would be if all Python modules were numbered sequentially in alphabetical order, meaning that adding a new module changes the URLs of existing modules' pages.) Compare the PostgreSQL documentation: if you do a web search for 'postgres nextval', you'll find the documentation for Postgres's sequence functions (which is correct), but chances are it'll be the old docs - version 8.1 most likely. If there's no weighting toward one in particular, I'd say that returning information for the latest version is the most logical default.

Obviously there's more docs difference between Python 2 and Python 3 than between Postgres 8.1 and Postgres 9.1, but the most accessible version of a page should not IMHO distinguish between Python minor versions.

ChrisA

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