Nicholas Jacobson wrote:

IIRC, Guido once mentioned that he regretted not setting function docstrings to come before the function declaration line, instead of after.

[ examples deleted ]

I think that commenting the function before its declaration, at the same tabbed point, increases the code's readability.

What do you think about making this change at some point (e.g. Python 3000)? Or if not, then having the option to toggle to this layout?

Please don't. All class attributes are declared within the class. Pulling out the docstring would make it an exception. The current situation is very clear and easy to explain to newbies. If you feel the current position of the docstring may be the first attribute's docstring, insert a newline at the proper positions to separate the two. It works for me. --eric