[Doc-SIG] A draft for a "defining new types" chapter for ext.tex
Fred L. Drake, Jr.
fdrake@acm.org
Mon, 19 Feb 2001 09:06:02 -0500 (EST)
Michael Hudson writes:
> After various people noticing that there is no documentation at all for
> defining new types for python in the standard docs I set to work:
>
> http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~mwh21/hacks/ext/defining-new-types.html
I'll take a look at this; hopefully later today. Do I have
permission to integrate this into the existing documentation?
> It's not even nearly finished; I would like to add sections on supporting
> GC, coercion, rich comparisons &c (partly because documenting such things
> would force me to learn about them!). But I would like to see what people
> think.
I have some text from Neil Schemenauer on adding GC support to
objects; I'll try and integrate that before the upcoming beta.
> (a) to define a new type really you need to understand how Python is
> implemented. So perhaps I should write a Python-Internals-HOWTO
> first.
That might even reasonably be part of the Extending & Embedding
manual, given the necessity of understanding the material. If you
write it, it's pretty much your call where it goes.
> (b) The Extending and Embedding Manual could really do with being entirely
> rewritten.
Yep!
> (c) It's hard to think of a sensible order to write such a thing in
> without lots of circular dependencies (of the form you need to read
> chapter I to understand chapter II, but to understand chapter I you
> need to have read chapter III which requires understanding chapter
> II...).
Sure! It'll open when my kids are on there own, so it will be a
while before it's available. ;-)
-Fred
--
Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at acm.org>
PythonLabs at Digital Creations