From msapiro at value.net  Tue Jun  6 01:15:25 2006
From: msapiro at value.net (Mark Sapiro)
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 16:15:25 -0700
Subject: [Doc-SIG] Problem with mkhowto
Message-ID: <PC1740200606051615250421335e865e@msapiro>

I am one of the developers on the Mailman project. I am trying to make
some minor edits to some of our documentation which is maintained as
.tex files and then converted to PostScript, PDF, HTML, etc. with
mkhowto.

I am working under Cygwin/Windows, and I have the following Cygwin
packages installed

perl 5.8.7-5
python 2.4.3-1
tetex 3.0.0-3
netpbm 10.30-1

I have also installed latex2html 2002-2-1 (1.71) per
<http://docs.python.org/doc/cygwin.html>, and it appears to work just
fine if run standalone.

I have downloaded the source for Python 2.4.0 and am trying to run the
makehowto script. I can successfully run

mkhowto -pdf sometexfile.tex

but if I try to produce any other output format, either with or without
-pdf in the same run, I always encounter the error


pdfTeX error (ext1): \pdfinfo used while \pdfoutput is not set.
<argument> { \def \\{, } \pdfinfo
                                  { /Author (\@author ) /Title (\@title
) } }
l.12 \maketitle

No pages of output.


I tried running 'make' in the distribution Python-2.4/Doc/ directory,
and I get the same error there too. The offending \def appears to be
in Python-2.4/Doc/texinputs/howto.cls.

My questions are am I doing something wrong or have I failed to do a
necessary step? Can these tools be run on Cygwin at all? Do I need a
different (older/newer) version of something?

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan


From msapiro at value.net  Fri Jun  9 03:39:50 2006
From: msapiro at value.net (Mark Sapiro)
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 18:39:50 -0700
Subject: [Doc-SIG] Problem with mkhowto
In-Reply-To: <PC1740200606051615250421335e865e@msapiro>
Message-ID: <PC17402006060818395005783dd9f7f4@msapiro>

Mark Sapiro wrote:
>
>I have downloaded the source for Python 2.4.0 and am trying to run the
>makehowto script. I can successfully run
>
>mkhowto -pdf sometexfile.tex
>
>but if I try to produce any other output format, either with or without
>-pdf in the same run, I always encounter the error
>
>
>pdfTeX error (ext1): \pdfinfo used while \pdfoutput is not set.
><argument> { \def \\{, } \pdfinfo
>                                  { /Author (\@author ) /Title (\@title
>) } }
>l.12 \maketitle
>
>No pages of output.
>
>
>I tried running 'make' in the distribution Python-2.4/Doc/ directory,
>and I get the same error there too. The offending \def appears to be
>in Python-2.4/Doc/texinputs/howto.cls.


Nevermind ...

I downloaded Python 2.4.3 and I see that
Python-2.4.3/Doc/texinputs/howto.cls has been fixed and I no longer
have a problem.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan


From blais at furius.ca  Wed Jun 21 02:04:21 2006
From: blais at furius.ca (Martin Blais)
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 20:04:21 -0400
Subject: [Doc-SIG] [Announce] haddoc and haddoc.el
Message-ID: <8393fff0606201704j3441bf75yeab5b89d9de44447@mail.gmail.com>

Description
===========

Haddoc is a simple tool that allows an emacs user to search the Python HTML
documentation indexes and to bring a web browser to an index term page.

Motivation
----------

Even though I have the Python TexInfo documentation installed from my Emacs,
somehow I always end up browsing the documentation from a web browser.  Most of
the time I start from either the Python Library Reference or from the index.  I
wanted to be able to bring up the documentation from within Emacs.   This does
it.

With haddoc, you invoke the elisp function ``haddoc-lookup`` (I type ``C-c .``),
enter some search terms, and the matches from the Python indexes are shown in a
buffer, from which you can select to direct your external web browser to.  I
like to drive an external Firefox with it.


Design
------

I took the simple approach and wrote a combination of Emacs-LISP and Python code
to implement this:

* ``haddoc-update``: a Python script that will parse the HTML documentation
  indexes and generate a mapping of the index entries to the HTML pages in a DBM
  database (in ``/var/lib/haddoc/haddoc.db`` by default)

* ``haddoc-lookup``: a Python script that does a lookup of search terms
  (potentially incomplete) on the index keys and returns the page references for
  each of the search terms on stdout

* ``haddoc.el``: an Emacs-LISP package that can query the results of
  ``haddoc-lookup`` and spawn a webbrowser to the appropriate pages.



Download at:
http://furius.ca/downloads/haddoc/releases/


Cheers,

From amk at amk.ca  Fri Jun 30 23:57:23 2006
From: amk at amk.ca (A.M. Kuchling)
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:57:23 -0400
Subject: [Doc-SIG] First draft of Functional HOWTO
Message-ID: <20060630215723.GA16013@rogue.amk.ca>

I've finally completed a first draft of a Functional Programming HOWTO 
that discusses the language feature and modules that are useful 
in functional-style programs.  

The draft is at <http://www.amk.ca/python/writing/functional>; this
won't be its permanent home, because once it's done it'll go in
Doc/howto/ in the distribution.  

I'd greatly appreciate comments on it.  It still feels somehow
incomplete, like more of the general material is needed, but I'm not
sure what to add.

I wrote a small but nontrivial functional program as an example --
it's in sandbox/Doc in SVN -- but I'm not sure dissecting an example
is very useful.  The resulting section would be fairly long, and I
haven't come up with an example that exercises every single feature
(e.g. most of the \ functions in the itertools module).

A more minor issue: perhaps the HOWTO should describe genexps in
detail, and mention listcomps as an aside; this would be the oppposite
of how it's currently organized.  Thoughts?

--amk