[New-bugs-announce] [issue16893] Create IDLE help.txt from Doc/library/idle.rst

[Zachary Ware]

New submission from Zachary Ware:

Lib/idlelib/help.txt and Doc/library/idle.rst contain almost exactly the same information, only formatted a bit differently.  This issue is to suggest the merger of the two files, by way of creating help.txt from idle.rst as a part of the build or install process.

This could be as simple as merely copying the one to the other, but that of course leaves in place all reST directives that mean nothing to a simple text document.  Thus, idle.rst should be processed to create help.txt.  This could be done with sphinx/docutils, but to avoid having the CPython build process (not just the doc build process) depend on those tools, I think a very simple dedicated script could be created to do the processing without much trouble.

As far as I can tell, this new script would only have to do a few simple steps:

- Remove comments (including index markers, etc.)
- Remove reST roles (replace ":role:`" with "`", possibly remove "`" as well)
- Remove backslash escapes
- Remove (or undouble) double colons
- Replace "#." with "1.", etc.

Thoughts?

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assignee: docs at python
components: Documentation, IDLE
messages: 179362
nosy: Todd.Rovito, docs at python, eric.araujo, zach.ware
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Create IDLE help.txt from Doc/library/idle.rst
type: enhancement
versions: Python 3.4

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue16893>
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