[Distutils] man page generation and other documentation

[Kurt Schwehr]

I posted this on comp.lang.python and only got one email back.  Maybe
someone here could point me to a package python package that does man pages
right.  I know I am a dinosaur for still liking man pages.  And a follow
on... I just grabbed that 3.0 alpha of epydoc and after using it for two
weeks, I REALLY like it, but it has some quirks.  I haven't heard back from
the author, but what is the current state of documentation best practice for
python.  I got frustrated by lack of features from pydoc and doxygen doesn't
really understand python that well.

Thanks much!
-kurt

my nntp post...


I am rearranging the layout of one of my python projects so that it
more closely conforms to how most python projects seem to work.  I now
have a structure like this:

seismic-py
   - setup.py
   - seismic
        - bulk of the code
   - scripts
        - programs that go in bin

I am using OptionParser, help2man, groff and man2html to provide man
pages.  Everything was sitting in the top level directory, so it was
clear where to put these, but where do I put the foo.help2man files
that contain extra text for the man pages?  If I put it in scripts,
that is pretty easy to cope with, but I was thinking about a docs
directory, but then the build process might be more difficult.  Or
should I be putting in another string in each executable that contains
this extra man page info?  Then it would show up in epydoc as well.
Maybe something like

__help2man__ = '''
[AUTHOR]
Kurt Schwehr

[SEE ALSO]
segysql.py

[DESCRIPTION]
.PP

The --coord-unit option is designed to allow use of databases that
exclude the CoordUnit field.  This field is probably the same for all
traces in the majority of SEGY data files, so most segy-py drivers
will want to exclude coordunit from the short list (see segysql.py).
The values are taken from page 14 of the SEG-Y Rev 1 specification

  -1 = Follow field 89-90 of the trace header
   1 = Length (meters or feet) [NOT supported]
   2 = Seconds of arc
   3 = Degrees, minutes, seconds (DMS) [NOT SUPPORTED]
'''

I am still in the middle of shuffling the tree about, but it is
available here...

https://cowfish.unh.edu/projects/seismic-py/

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!  I am still trying to
understand the best practices for python packaging.

seismic-py
   - setup.py
   - seismic
        - __init.py__
        - bulk of the code *.py
   - scripts
        - programs that go in bin/the users executable path (no .py
extension)
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