[docs] [issue9739] Output of help(...) is wider than 80 characters

Terry J. Reedy report at bugs.python.org
Sat Sep 4 00:21:05 CEST 2010


Terry J. Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> added the comment:

Although this is not a problem in IDLE where the window can easily be expanded beyond 80 chars, I am in favor of the idea for other uses. The command line interpreter on Windows defaults to 80 chars and is not so easy to change, and one must be admin to make the change 'permanent' (until the next install reverts the change). In particular, the 82 char line for math.trun results in 'd.' of 'method.' wrapped to a line by itself with no indent. Pretty ugly.

However, I am puzzled why you edited the 74 char line for math.modf, which displays as 78 chars with a 4 char indent. This
'''\    
    Return the fractional and integer parts of x.  Both results carry the sign'''
displays fine on one line as is. The tracker, unfortunately, displays
123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012 only 72 chars.
    of x and are floats.

I agree that
    trunc(x:Real) -> Integral
is more helpful (and therefore better) than
    modf(x)

For something like
-"T.index(value, [start, [stop]]) -> integer -- return first index of value.\n"

I personally think '->' and 'return are redundant, so I would argue that this could be shortened to
-"T.index(value, [start, [stop]]) -> integer (first index of value).\n"
instead of by wrapping.

Since I am not yet in a position to apply patches, I am not (yet) in a position to tell you whether or how to produce more patches.

----------
nosy: +terry.reedy
stage:  -> patch review
versions: +Python 3.2

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue9739>
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