[Python-Dev] Python 2.1 PEPs

Guido van Rossum guido@digicool.com
Tue, 17 Apr 2001 12:59:29 -0400


> Ping asked to take over the code because he wanted to do it with Pydoc.
> He didn't do the online help part. I'm not sure if he thought I was
> going to do that part or if he just didn't get to it. Either way, it is
> less than a weekend's work to add pydoc to the interactive shell (and
> thus make it "online help") so I can do it in the next few weeks.

Actually, "from pydoc import help" already works; after that you can
type "help" or "help(module)" etc.  Or is "online help" more than
that?

Ping pointed out (in private email) that adding pydoc.help to
__builtin__ in site.py is the wrong thing to do because pydoc is large
and it would slow down startup too much.  He recommended to add a
small bootstrap function instead that imports and invokes pydoc.help
instead.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)