Mailman 3 December 2023 - docs

A suggestion for improving the documentation of chapter 10.9. Data Compression
by Guy Goldner 22 May '24

22 May '24

Hello dear Python gods :) I'm new at Python and was going over the documentation . This useful paragraph : https://docs.python.org/3.7/tutorial/stdlib.html#data-compression provides info for compressing text but IMHO some important additional info is needed, without which I expect nearly all users would get stuck just as I have. Moreover, while looking for a solution I noticed a lot of articles with outdated examples which no longer work - this confused me even more to the point I started suspecting something was amiss on my end... Anyhow, adding this info would do the trick : zlib works only with bytes and in Python 3.x strings are no longer bytes. Example : *>>> zlib.compress('this is a sample string which does not work in zlib because it requires bytes and not unicode')Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>TypeError: a bytes-like object is required, not 'str'>>>* Luckily Python has a very simple solution for this : encode to utf-8, compress, decode back to unicode like so : *>>> text = 'this is a sample string which does not work in zlib because it requires bytes and not unicode with chars like this »שלום '>>> encoded = text.encode()>>> text = 'this is a sample with unicode chars »שלום '>>> encoded = text.encode()>>> compressed = zlib.compress(encoded)>>> decompressed = zlib.decompress(compressed)>>> decoded = decompressed.decode()>>> len(text),len(encoded),len(compressed) #notice that compression of short strings can be larger than the original(42, 47, 54)>>> print(text,'\n',encoded,'\n',compressed)this is a sample with unicode chars »שלום b'this is a sample with unicode chars \xc2\xbb\xd7\xa9\xd7\x9c\xd7\x95\xd7\x9d ' b'x\x9c+\xc9\xc8,V\x00\xa2D\x85\xe2\xc4\xdc\x82\x9cT\x85\xf2\xcc\x92\x0c\x85\xd2\xbc\xcc\xe4\xfc\x94T\x85\xe4\x8c\xc4\xa2b\x85C\xbb\xaf\xaf\xbc>\xe7\xfa\xd4\xebs\x15\x00\xb2K\x14|'>>> text == decodedTrue* Thank you ! You are doing a great thing ! B.R., Guy Goldner

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Suggestion: link from UserList docs to the collections classes list of methods
by Seebs 25 Jan '24

25 Jan '24

Hi! My exposure to Python is sporadic so I am functionally a complete newbie here, and maybe this is just really obvious to more experienced people, but I couldn't find a thing I wanted in the UserList documentation, and "an experienced programmer who doesn't know this language is confused by the documentation" feels like a thing potentially worth reporting. I started here: https://docs.python.org/3/library/collections.html#collections.UserList > In addition to supporting the methods and operations of mutable > sequences, UserList instances provide the following attribute: As a naive user, I don't know what are the "methods and operations of mutable sequences", or where to look for them. So when I was contemplating subclassing UserList and attempting to wrap its methods, I found that I did not know what those methods would be, or how to find those methods. A helpful user with more experience pointed me to: https://docs.python.org/3/library/collections.abc.html#collections-abstract… And from this I have concluded that, if I wanted to override behavior such that my wrapped list would intercept every list operation, I would need to define: __getitem__, __setitem__, __delitem__, __len__, insert And... I think that's it? I think if I understand correctly, the "mixin methods" such as __iadd__ would be defined in terms of these. I think. But I think it would be better if, as a naive user encountering the UserList documentation, I could figure this out without asking other people. Possible enhancements: 1. UserList actually provides the list directly inline. 2. The "methods and operations of mutable sequences" could be or also provide a link directly to that list of methods and operations. -s

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About documentation
by Samyak Neupane 25 Jan '24

25 Jan '24

Hello sir/Mam, I am in beginning phase of learning Python language. And this is awesome. This is really simple and just so fantastic language for beginners to taste how a coding really looks like. As am in learning the beginner part in python I really wanna master on it . And I have found the documentation of it. But I am lost there looking those documentation. I really don't know which topic to look for and start with . I know we need to start from tutorial but the library and language reference, I just don't get it. If you could elaborate on it little bit,I would really appreciate it. Thank you for your time and consideration. Best regards, Samyak Neupane, Kathmandu Nepal

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typo
by Роман Филимонов 25 Jan '24

25 Jan '24

slipped "s" at https://docs.python.org/3/library/dataclasses.html

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Getting tkinter...
by Steve Philcox 08 Jan '24

08 Jan '24

Hi, I'm at https://docs.python.org/3.8/library/tkinter.html#:~:text=Running%20python%2… . There's a helpful paragraph that explains how to check/confirm that tkinter is present. I clearly don't have it. My suggestion is to add something to guide the unfortunate to where/how to get it! I arrived at that page via google - 'python can't find tkinter' I'm running ubuntu and python3. My knowledge of managing python is limited but I have tried 'pip install tkinter' and that hasn't worked. It said success but python didn't find tkinter. I have since tried 'sudo apt install python3.8-tk' and that said: Note, selecting 'python3-tk' instead of 'python3.8-tk' So, I now have a working tkinter. You could make it a bit easier! Regards, Steve Philcox

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Cannot send python documentation to Kindle
by jureq＠op.pl 15 Dec '23

15 Dec '23

Hello, Does anybody know why python documentation in epub format (https://docs.python.org/3/archives/python-3.12.1-docs.epub) cannot be send to Kindle ebook reader using email .....(a)kindle.com or using www page https://www.amazon.com/sendtokindle ? Is there any error in the file format or is the error on Amazon's side? About an hour after sending the file, I always receive an email with the following content: Dear Customer, A document, sent at 03:15 PM on Fri, Dec 15, 2023 GMT, could not be delivered due to a service error. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try sending your document(s) again later. To learn more about sending documents to Kindle, please visit our help page. By downloading or using Send to Kindle, you agree to the terms here. Regards, Amazon Kindle Support

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