June 18, 2019 11:00 PM

First, allow me to congratulate you on the excellent job you keep doing in documenting the python that we know and love, the "CPython" canon as we know it because of your work, published by python.org.

My question is, how do we find any kind of documentation for the many, many modules that are written by third parties, and not owned or cared for by python.org?

I began to use Fedora Linux about 6 moths ago, after being a Slackware aficionado for many more years. I have tried other Linuxes, but for the purpose of my question, let's stick to the Unix work-alike product known as Fedora Core -- now we have progressed to issue 30 - Fedora 30, as they call it.

Fedora 30 has easy-to-use software repositories. In a search I conducted using the package installer known as "dnfdragora," I discovered a huge number of modules for both python 2 and 3 (which surprises me - I leaned on Python 3 and keep forgetting that there are many Python 2 users who are dedicated to Python and still consider the language their own.) 

These modules were written by third parties that are well-integrated with the Python canon that is documented so well at https://docs.python.org/3/. The modules appear to be written in a good Python style, and to fulfill many of the needs of Python users, other than the fairly vast numbers of modules that I am calling the Python.org canon. The install well into the sys.path, and many are packages (which I have learned to recognize because of the file __init__.py in the directory/directories.)

In my case, I discovered a number of python3 modules that help with the task of writing elegant, consistent, and useful command-line programs. These are the programs that I like to write, primarily because they may do work "behind the scenes"," hearkening back to the days when I used to program in a combination of C and Assembly languages.

For example, there are modules known as python3-cliff and python3-clint, which claim to offer many useful tools for writers of command-line programs. And there are at least 8 more that are offered by the same repositories. I downloaded and installed them, but I didn't know what to do except read the README.rst file they put in /usr/share/doc/<module name>. That didn't give me much information I could sink my teeth into. I also tried studying the source code. I choose python3-cliff. I discovered (so far) a very interesting collection of classes and some (apparently test apps, but I didn't know how to run the test apps buried in a package that includes of the rest of the cliff system. I tried to import them, first into the python interpreter. But no luck there, except the interpreter noted there were no mistakes - the classes just left no __main__ section by which the classes could be tested. Then I tried IDLE, with very little success, except to verify that the test app and other modules I tried to run were "just" classes. I browsed the web a bit and so far have come up with no information regarding python3-cliff.

All this leads me to wonder if some sort of documentation exists, but I haven't known where to find it. Hopefully you know some things about this that I clearly don't.

I apologize for the length of this email. I wanted you to get a sense of what I mean when I ask, "How do we find information about modules that aren't officially part of the python.org canon?"

Thanks for reading this and I do hope/wish for a response for you, who must be very busy.

Bryan A. Zimmer

(651) 492-9388