I too agree the new help system looks nice. I was considering at one point jumping up and writing a documentation system for Python/Zope. Unfortunately my notes, not many, are at work. But some things I had in mind were based on something like JavaDoc. I am not a Java expert and have not really used JavaDoc much but have seen some of its documentation. I was thinking it would be nice to have a parser which could extract documentation from source to create external documentation files which could be generated into multiple formats, html, xml, etc. I would have needed to create a documentation format which could be used in source but extracted. I was not going to use docstrings as they are intended for a different purpose and are compiled into the bytecode. I was thinking that the parser could run over a module and extract functions, methods, variables and properties, etc. and create a stub framework on a form. A documenter could then edit documentation for any or all of the methods, save and it would be inserted appropriately into source. I thought it would also be nice if the documentation tree would also parallel the source tree and have a corresponding colorized html rendering of the module for browsing. This way one could jump from documentation to source at will. I was basically making idea notes. I was going to look at the current doc generating and py2html tools available first. Then Starship went down and I couldn't access them. :( I also wanted to see what the DC team was doing. I think it would be nice to see some ideas and processes for what and how Amos and Michel are doing with the documentation and how the community can help. Just some thoughts. Jimmie Houchin Jason Spisak wrote:
Shane Hathaway writes:
Jason Spisak wrote:
I was just browsing the help system and can I just say it is terrfic. The .py files especially. Not that python isn't that easy to read, but having the ZQR type stuff handy online is a huge win. Is that stuff updated from the source on the fly?
Almost. It's actually written in separate files that mirror the structure of the real source. And I'd like to bring up the point that I wonder why it is written that way. Wouldn't it make more sense to self-document the source?
If the issue is that some methods shouldn't be callable from a URL, there are better solutions to that problem (this is written to DC mainly):
Is this the reason that it's not pulling the docs from the source? That's not a good idea. With all the effort that Michel put in to work around not documenting in the source, he could have fixed it so that it pulled the docs from the source on the fly without effecting the URL access.
1) Enahnce the permissions system to include "Accessible via HTTP", "Accessible via FTP", etc. 2) Use an underscore as the first character of a docstring to indicate a non-URL-callable method.
I just looked at it and that seems like doing work twice. Why not just document your source?
Wonderingly,
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