[Doc-SIG] regarding the current state of Python docs

[John M. Gabriele]

--- Fredrik Lundh <fredrik at pythonware.com> wrote:
> John M. Gabriele wrote:
>[snip] 
> 
> > Personally, I think the best way document Python (outside
> > of the built-in docstrings) is a wiki but with only a select
> > group of folks with edit privileges.
> 
> Absolutely, but we want good semantic markup, and no wiki format I've
> seen makes it easy to get the semantics right.  That doesn't mean that
> we cannot use an existing wiki engine, but I don't think any existing wiki
> format will cut it.

I've only poked around a little bit so far, but it looks
like the python wiki of choice seems to be moinmoin.

What sort of output are you looking for that moinmoin
cannot provide? Just curious. Lots of sites use plain
wiki software for their docs, and I've always found
them to be satisfactory.

Perhaps there's a plug-in of some sort for that wiki
that will give you what you're looking for? Maybe
more info here:
http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/MoinMoinExtensions


> > How hard is it to convert html to suitable moinmoin wiki
> > text input? Is there already a tool for this? Maybe someone
> > needs to just jump on it, pull the starter on the chainsaw,
> > just go for it, and let the chips fall where they may. :)
> 
> I've spent a week hacking away with a small axe

:)

> in my spare spare time:
> 
>     http://effbot.org/zone/pyref.htm
>     http://effbot.org/lib/ (output snapshots)
>     http://online.effbot.org/ (look for documentation posts)

So, I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at there. Have
you been taking the doc source (LaTeX) and converting it
to input suitable for moinmoin, or are you writing your own
wiki engine with its own markup style? I mean this as a
compliment: those links point to pages that look pretty
much like normal wiki pages. :)

> if some wiki engine and/or python framework hacker wants to start playing
> with an edit-through-the-web frontend for the new structured documentation
> format, drop me a line.

What's "the new documentation format"?


>  ajax and css tinkerers are also welcome.
> 
> </F>
> 

Thanks,
---J


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