I've found a publisher who's somewhat interested in producing a printed version of the Python docs, though nothing is certain yet. In the knowledge that there may be a printed version of the 1.5 docs, what changes should be made?
Gabriel Berriz made some excellent suggestions, where the priority is improving the index and adding cross-references from module to module. (For example, the rand module would also reference random.py and whrandom.py. Michael K. Johnson at Red Hat independently suggested the same improvement.)
I don't like writing documentation much, and indexing is the most boring part of documentation :-( So any help here would be appreciated. The best way to index, I've been told, is for someone to make a separate pass over the complete text when it's finished. (However, O'Reilly did this for PP and the resulting index in the first printing is considered somewhat lacking by most.)
Regarding a printed version, what should be in it? Probably the big 4 should all be included: library, reference, extension manual, and tutorial. (Or can the tutorial be left out? I'd vote no, but...)
It should be in! Makes it more valuable by itself.
Are there other documents that should be included? Possibilities:
* qua.tex
No, no, no!
* The man page for the Python interpreter
Yes.
* Documentation for the matrix extensions? PIL? Something else?
The Tkinter lifesaver, if someone can be bothered to upgrade it to Tk 4.x. I think NumPy and PIL are a bit too specialized. (In fact, some chapters of the library manual, e.g. the SGI and Mac specific parts, might be left out too.)
* Is there Windows or Mac documentation that could/should be included?
Hmm, not sure. Probably a specialized audience that requires special catering anyway. But maybe Mark Hammond has something to add and we could increase the audience 10-fold this way. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________ DOC-SIG - SIG for the Python Documentation Project send messages to: doc-sig@python.org administrivia to: doc-sig-request@python.org _______________