Mailman 3 June 2008 - Doc-SIG

Proposal: don't nest optional brackets
by A.M. Kuchling Sept. 26, 2008

Sept. 26, 2008

To show a series of optional parameters, currently we nest square brackets. http://docs.python.org/dev/library/warnings.html#warnings.filterwarnings warnings.filterwarnings(action[, message[, category[, module[, lineno[, append]]]]]) My proposal is that we drop the nesting and write this as: warnings.filterwarnings(action [, message, category, module, lineno, append]) Currently the stylesheets make the brackets very big and dark, so I've also added a space before the bracket. This change means we'd lose the ability to show when two optional arguments must be supplied at the same time, which could currently be written like this: warnings.filterwarnings(action[, message, category[, module]]) In this hypothetical example, if you supply 'message' you must also supply 'category'. But I think that for most functions, you can supply each optional argument or not; you rarely need to supply two optional arguments that are tied in this way, and we can handle such cases by adding a sentence such as "Both message and category parameters must be supplied." A few places (difflib, doctest, probably others) use this format: .. function:: context_diff(a, b[, fromfile][, tofile][, fromfiledate][, tofiledate][, n][, lineterm]) It's better than the nested version -- at least it avoids the ]]]]]) at the end -- but I think having a single set of square brackets also works and reduces the symbolic noise further. .. function:: context_diff(a, b [, fromfile, tofile, fromfiledate, tofiledate, n, lineterm]) The brackets are large enough that I think this would still be quite readable; it doesn't seem likely that readers will miss that these parameters are optional. What does everyone think? --amk

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Docutils 0.5 released
by grubert＠users.sourceforge.net June 26, 2008

June 26, 2008

Short list of changes * Python2.1 support was dropped, as are Netscape0.4 compromises in the HTML writer. * Enhanced citation support and literal-block parametrization for LaTeX2e writer. * The PEP writer supports new python.org website structure and pep2pyramid.py. * New OO API for directives. Hebrew (and possibly other language) mappings. Configuration files are now assumed and required to be UTF-8-encoded. Some templates and enhanced emacs support. download: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/docutils/docutils-0.5.tar.gz?download Changelog: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/0.5/HISTORY.html --

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development docs waste a lot of horizontal space
by Forest June 19, 2008

June 19, 2008

Hi, folks. I was just browsing the development docs, and noticed that the new left-side navigation bar wastes a lot of horizontal space on the web page. It fills nearly a third of my browser window (at its usual size) with useless blank space, at the expense of the pertinent information. This makes it harder to get much use out of a docs window placed next to my editor window, since I am now forced to switch active windows and/or scroll around the docs window just to read the section I'm working with. In a few cases, it leaves space for so few words per line that even the visible part of the docs actually become harder to read (especially with text justification). For comparison, here are screen shots from the old and new documentation: http://hestiafire.org/forest/img/doc25.png http://hestiafire.org/forest/img/doc26.png Is this side bar going to be present in the final release of the python 2.6 docs? I hope not. It's a significant loss in readability, IMHO.

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Python in the Browser: Interactive interpreter in the browser for documentation and tutorials
by Michael Foord June 15, 2008

June 15, 2008

Hello all, I thought you might be interested in my latest project as it could be very useful for providing live examples for documentation and tutorials. I've setup a project page for "Python in the Browser", an interactive Python interpreter that runs in an HTML textarea. http://code.google.com/p/pythoninthebrowser/ There's no download yet, but I have checked in the current code. "Python in the Browser" is an interactive Python interpreter that runs in the browser, using Silverlight 2 and IronPython?. This is ideal for tutorials and documentation, where example Python code can actually be tried in the browser. It requires Silverlight 2 Beta 2, and the Python version is 2.5. The interpreter runs in an HTML textarea, with Javascript that communicates with Silverlight and prevents you deleting text from the console except after the interactive prompt. Target browsers are Firefox 2 & 3, Safari and IE 7. (Although reports on compatibility with other browsers welcomed.) Currently it 'works' but is at an early stage of development. The project is a combination of IronPython? (for the interpreter loop), Javascript (for the 'console behaviour' in the textarea) and C# (as a helper to call into Silverlight from Javascript). I've entered the known issues at: http://code.google.com/p/pythoninthebrowser/issues/list There is a live example at: http://www.voidspace.org.uk/ironpython/silverlight-console/console.html I'm not sure how quickly I will be able to develop this (I have a book to finish!), but it should be very easy to knock out a couple of the simpler issues quickly. If you want to contribute then please post patches to the issue tracker. Michael Foord -- http://www.ironpythoninaction.com/ http://www.theotherdelia.co.uk/ http://www.voidspace.org.uk/ http://www.ironpython.info/ http://www.resolverhacks.net/

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