I've (hopefully) just about completed a project for my platform to conver the Python Library Reference and Tutorial to a format specific to the platform. However I realised I'd left the code openended enough for me to start an HTML version, which I did on Saturday; I think it's now complete. I say "I think", because I haven't really had time (and certainly not the inclination) to check all the pages that it generates for 100% correctness; having said that, I'm fairly confident that the conversion has been, at worst, largely successful. If you want to get a download URL and skip lots of boring prose, there's a URL at the middle of the message :) Due to the original intention of my project, the pages generated are ever so slightly different from LaTeX2HTML (this is an understatement). For a start, I rip everything up into subpages (so if you want to should be able to do something like "netscape string/index.html" to view a particular page. The reason I've done this is because I can now press F1 on a function in my text editor, and get whisked straight away to the appropriate page) and stick things in directories. There are an awful lot of directories, but it does mean you can put the mouse over a link and not get a horrendous "node198374836495763452" type number, which I've found especially useful for some links! Secondly, my front page is, intentionally, nothing like the page for the current Library Reference. It's all in a big table in essentially alphabetical order; I found that finding things with the old page was generally quicker if I loaded the page into my text editor, found the position of what I was looking for and then searched in my web browser... Thirdly, there are a quite lot of inter-manual links; if one page refers to another then generally (working out foolproof rules is not trivial) there'll be a nice HTML link so you can click and go there. This has got to a big boon for novice users and I'm sure even some of you expert users will find it useful. It also tries very hard to get web and e-mail links working properly, so you can click on them as per normal. Fourthly, the tutorial is bunged in there as well because I know I still find it useful for looking up syntax bits when I get confused :) Also, for novice users they probably don't want that differentiation between tutorial and library reference because it's a pain having lots of web browser windows up (especially if you're unlucky enough to be using "window at the front" Windows), so it seemed like a good idea. It also allows there to be links from some things in the tutorial to the PLR, another novice boon. Lastly there are two indices included; one is a traditional "book" (ish) index, and the other is a coders "method/data" type index. Both of them have their uses to my way of thinking, so they're both included. They're also split up into alphabetically named files, so it's not one monolithic index like LaTeX2HTML generates. At the moment, I'm not convinced that there is actually any use for this product. I believe somebody is working on SGML versions of the PLR so presumably there'll be *another* HTML version of the manuals coming along sometime soon**; it's in a rather different format to what people are used to, and computer people (and I speak from experience here) are often reluctant to change to something different...; I wouldn't be entirely sure the conversion process has been 100% accurate so there may be some goofs in there. However, I like it quite a lot over the original and find it aids productivity, so I'm releasing a sort of test version to the doc-sig to see if there's actually any use for this. If there isn't, I'll wrap it up and it won't budge off my machine; if people do think it's useful, and perhaps it'll be some time before another lot of HTML documentation will come along, then I will consider releasing it to a wider community if I think it'll stand up to it. So, here's the URL to download the Python Library Reference (and tutorial) in a different HTML form: http://yi.com/home/TrattLaurence/comp/python/man.html WARNINGS: 1) There's a .tar.gz file to download, it contains lots (nearly 2300 files if I'm being honest) files with 150ish directories at the top level which contain the HTML, so you probably want to decompress this in a directory on its own. If you're wondering, you do get meaningful filenames for this :) 2) The filenames contain potentially "funny" characters (noticeabley "!, ;" and hard spaces), so if your OS doesn't like them, tell me so the next version of the manual won't have them in. I *think* all the filenames are OK on Windows machines, so I'm guessing they're probably alright on UNIX. They don't cause me any problems, but my filing system is a little unusual 3) I'm not promising any support though if, as I've said, there's enough interest I would like to develop this to an appropriate level The conversion is almost 100% automatic (I generated the index file and needed to tidy up the tutorials index (I'd never intended that such files should work with my project, so was quite happy when with only minimal mucking about the tutorial worked) but apart from that, this is a genuine build from "this morning"), very slow but entirely in Python. I will release the source in the near future (hopefully within a month), but at the moment, a couple of things are a bit bonkers because I'm running an early beta of Python 1.5 to my machine, and one or two things like package support are not functioning correctly yet. Once I've got a platform independent version ready (and if there's any interest in the project as a whole) and got some documentation done, I'll put the source up for download. If it's of any interest (and as a sort of disclaimer), I don't know LaTeX so the process is based on purely imperical observations; this may have been an advantage :) At the moment the manual is, if I remember correctly, based on the 1.5b2 documentation which should be almost entirely up to date. However, could anyone point me to a downloadable directory with the very latest PLR (and tutorial?) in LaTeX format? The HTML on www.python.org had a date of February last time I looked, but I can't find LaTeX of that date on ftp. python.org :( Please don't hesitate to contact me if you find this intersting / useless or if I've trodden on anyones toes. Please don't distribute the manual outside of the doc-sig; it's not in my opinion ready yet, and certainly is not before some Python experts have looked at it. e-mail to: tratt@dcs.kcl. ac.uk Hope this is of use to someone and sorry for this huge message, Laurie ** If anyones intersted, it's very easy to make outputters for other formats, so if you want the PLR in format xyz, give me a shout. SGML should be relatively easy if anyone wants that, though presumably somebody else is already on that case _______________ DOC-SIG - SIG for the Python Documentation Project send messages to: doc-sig@python.org administrivia to: doc-sig-request@python.org _______________