Mailman 3 October 2008 - Doc-SIG

"What's New" for all versions
by Robert Kern Oct. 16, 2008

Oct. 16, 2008

Whenever I have to look for when a feature was introduced, I go looking at the "What's New in Python 2.x" pages. Since the documentation for Python 2.x only contains the "What's New in Python 2.x" and none of the earlier parts, this becomes fairly tedious if I guess the version wrong. I'd really like to see all of the older "What's New" pages in the current Python version's documentation. There should be a single ToC page collating the ToCs for all of the "What's New" versions. I don't think it should replace the current ToC, but I think it should exist. I don't have time to work on this immediately, so I thought I would throw it out there to see if there's any interest. -- Robert Kern "I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." -- Umberto Eco

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A minor slip while typing
by John Doe Oct. 12, 2008

Oct. 12, 2008

Hello, please let me focus your attention to a little slip that was made while typing a code example in the Python 3.0 documentation. Please visit this<http://docs.python.org/dev/3.0/library/functions.html?highlight=property#pr…>link and note the 3rd code example which starts like this: class C(object): def __init__(self): self._x = None This is probably a slip, because it should better be like this: class C(object): def __init__(self): self._x = None And since this is the only method with such coding style used, it's probably a slip. Please fix this if you have the time to do so. After all, it's not a very time-consuming thing to do. Thanks.

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dict.update docstring
by A.M. Kuchling Oct. 4, 2008

Oct. 4, 2008

I've been looking at the docstrings of the built-in types, and I found the docstring for dict.update() really hard to understand. | update(...) | D.update(E, **F) -> None. Update D from E and F: for k in E: D[k] = E[k] | (if E has keys else: for (k, v) in E: D[k] = v) then: for k in F: D[k] = F[k] The parenthetical 'if E has keys' is the most unreadable part; it's actually referring to the keys() method. My proposed rewrite (as formatted by pydoc): | update(...) | D.update(E, **F) -> None. Update D from dict/iterable E and F. | If E has a .keys() method, does: for k in E: D[k] = E[k] | If E lacks .keys() method, does: for (k, v) in E: D[k] = v | In either case, this is followed by: for k in F: D[k] = F[k] Does this seem clear, or should it be expanded more? dict.update is pretty complicated! --amk

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