[Doc-SIG] [development doc updates]

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Moore, Paul writes:
 > In http://www.python.org/dev/doc/devel/lib/module-copyreg.html, using IE6 on
 > a Windows 2000 machine, scroll down to the definition of pickle() at the
 > bottom. Narrow the window, and when you reach a certain point, the "("
 > following the function name word wraps onto the next line, resulting in
 > 
 >     pickle type, function[,
 >     (      constructor])
 > 
 > The "(" shouldn't be allowed to wrap.

Shouldn't, but the controls are flakier here.  Try it now.

 > I know this is a borderline case of a borderline case, but I'm not sure that
 > the benefits of all this are worth it. Even when wrapped "properly", you get
 > 
 >     pickle( type, function[,
 >             constructor])
 > 
 > which doesn't look right to me with the "[," hard up against the "function".
 > I'd prefer the "[," to wrap with the following parameter. To do that, you'd

I'm not entirely sure I agree, but I can live with it either way.
What I'd really like to see is a half-space before the "[," (but not
if its just "[" following "(").  I've changed this a bit; it wraps for
me the way you describe on Mozilla 0.9.9; I don't have ready access to
MSIE right now.

 > need to use unbreakable spaces. Are these universally supported (or even
 > available??) And would unbreakable spaces work in any case? The original
 > problem I noted with "pickle(" would seem to imply that IE6 may well choose
 > to break between text and punctuation anyway.

It might; this seems like a policy issue that most browsers will
implement the same way, though, and not let the user control it
(though I think they should let the user control it).

 > I guess this is only really important for users on very narrow screens
 > (PDAs?), so their comments are probably more important here...

I think the right thing there is to generate simpler HTML and just let
it wrap any way it can.  That's not too difficult since the iSilo
format for PDAs is already using a customized version of the HTML
conversion.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fdrake at acm.org>
PythonLabs at Zope Corporation