[Doc-SIG] pythondoc on mac; multi-platform file names

[David Goodger]

I am attempting to use Daniel Larsson's pythondoc
(http://starship.python.net/crew/danilo/pythondoc/) on MacOS, and am running
into trouble. Pythondoc wants to create files with names like
'module.class.html'. When the total is over 31 characters (Mac's filename
length limit), pythondoc fails. I could hack the code to make it work, but
I'd rather do something general which could be included in the next release.
Also, there are inter-file cross references to consider.

1. Has anyone else successfully used pythondoc on MacOS, perhaps with
modifications? If so, I'd like to see any modifications, or at least hear
how you got around the OS problems.

2. Is there a general-purpose file naming utility module for Python which
gets around the limitations of various operating systems? Perhaps something
that checks the validity of a name, or creates a unique name (for a
specified directory) based on the input. Mac files can have spaces &
puntuation (except colon ':') in their names, but are limited to 31
characters. DOS (does anyone still use DOS? :-) is 8.3. Unix & Windows have
their own (hard or soft) rules.

I like Python for its multi-platform capabilities (among many other
aspects). This type of utility would make multi-platform programming that
much easier.

Thanks.

-- 
David Goodger    dgoodger@bigfoot.com