[Doc-SIG] Python Tutorial - urllib2

[Martin Blais]

On 12/22/05, Michael Foord <mike at pcblokes.com> wrote:
> By the way (and in the vain (sic) of shameless self-promotion...) there
> was a suggestion on Dobbs Python-URL that the inclusion of some of my
> material on urllib2 would be welcome in the tutorial.
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/1d52898f07b7dfcd/d015de23ad6818fa
>
> My tutorial is at : http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/urllib2.shtml
>
> The most appropriate sections to include would be on fetching URLs and
> handling errors, and possibly the basic authentication example. It
> probably fits best in the 'Brief tour of the standard library'.
>
> Would that be welcomed ? It is currently in rest format - and html of
> course ;-)

Your tutorial is great.  Read it a while ago.  Would love to see it
along the other tutorials or even in the library docs for the module
(as the urllib2 docs are a bit thin on explanations).


> Is reST acceptable for *someone* to add this material - and if so, what
> should I do about it ?

Convert it to LaTeX (it's easy) and submit it.


> By the way my vote is -1 on moving to html as the standard markup format
> and +1 on working on docutils to turn that into an usable input format.
> Additionally - having a wiki version, or a version that accepts user
> commentary would be a very useful way of gathering additional
> information. Of course someone has to maintain this... I think AMK did a
> simple implementation of this a while ago - although it had usability
> issues and the resulting data didn't seem to be used. I guess this is
> all part of the ongoing discussion.

There was a long and detailed discussion about using ReST as an input
format for documentation a while ago.  The consensus was that ReST
does not allow sufficient markup for technical documentation, which is
necessary for this kind of document.

The LaTeX input format using the macros from the python docs is very
simple.  Converting your document should be easy.

cheers,