[Python-Dev] Checked in...

Paul Prescod paul@prescod.net
Sun, 16 Jul 2000 15:18:42 -0500


onlinehelp.py is checked in. Here's the docstring:

This module is experimental and could be removed or radically changed
at any time.

It is intended specifically for the standard interpreter command 
line but is intended to be compatible with and useful for other
(e.g. GUI, handheld) environments. Help with those other environments is
appreciated.

Please remember to set PYTHONDOCS to the location of your HTML files:

e.g. 

set PYTHONDOCS=c:\python\docs
PYTHONDOCS=/python/docs

The docs directory should have a lib subdirectory with "index.html" in
it.
If it has *.tex then you have the documentation *source* distribution,
not
the runtime distribution.

The module exposes one object: "help". "help" has a repr that does
something
useful if you just type:

>>> from onlinehelp import help
>>> help

Of course one day the first line will be done automatically by site.py
or
something like that. help can be used as a function.

The function takes the following forms of input:

help( "string" ) -- built-in topic or global
help( <ob> ) -- docstring from object or type
help( "doc:filename" ) -- filename from Python documentation

Type help to get the rest of the instructions.

You can also use the module as a command line program:

python onlinehelp.py "if"

-- 
 Paul Prescod - Not encumbered by corporate consensus
It's difficult to extract sense from strings, but they're the only
communication coin we can count on. 
	- http://www.cs.yale.edu/~perlis-alan/quotes.html