[Numpy-discussion] NumPy Documentation Marathon progress

[Stéfan van der Walt]

Hi all,

I'd like to thank everyone who has responded so positively to the
NumPy Documentation Marathon.  We now have more than 10 contributors
enlisted, including (in order of signing up):

- Pauli Virtanen
- Emmanuelle Gouillart
- Joe Harrington
- Johann Cohen-Tanugi
- Alan Jackson
- Tim Cera
- Anne Archibald
- David Cournapeau
- Neil Martinsen Burrell
- Rob Hetland

We have already updated more than 50 docstrings (not all of them major
rewrites, but we're working on it).  I'd like to invite any interested
parties to join our efforts on

http://sd-2116.dedibox.fr/doc

It's easy: create an account on the wiki, familiarise yourself with
the docstring standard, and start editing.

When the source trunk re-opens for commits after the 1.1 release, I
plan to upload the changes from the wiki.  Thereafter, I will
synchronise them on a weekly or twice-weekly basis.

The reference guide is also shaping up nicely.  To bring you up to
speed: I have written a parser for the current docstring standard,
which is used to convert the docstrings from the source tree to a
stand-alone document.  This document is rendered using Sphinx, the
application developed to generate the Python 2.6 documentation.  You
can see the progress on the reference guide here, in HTML or PDF:

http://mentat.za.net/numpy/refguide
http://mentat.za.net/numpy/refguide/NumPy.pdf

- Mathematical formulas now render correctly (using mathml in the
.xhtml files, and LaTeX in the PDF).  If you can't read the mathml
(see for example the `bartlett` function) you may need to install
additional fonts (e.g.,
http://www.cs.unb.ca/~bremner/docs/mathml-debian-firefox/).  For
internet explorer, a separate plugin (mathplayer) is required.

- I'm aware that the HTML-search is broken -- we'll fix that soon.

So, that's where we are now.  A lot of the organisation has been done,
and there is an editing framework in place (thanks Pauli,
Emmanuelle!).  Now, we just need to write some content!

Thanks again for all your contributions, and here's to many more!

Regards
Stéfan