[Python-Dev] Re: interlocking dependencies on the path to a release

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> More control of what?  I thought that reST was specifically designed to 
> accommodate all of the Python-specific markup we're using in the latex 
> docs.

How do you create a module index and a "global" index in reST?
How do you express document inclusion (in the spirit of \input)?

> As a matter of language expressiveness, as far as I can tell, reST 
> accomodates marking up both short strings and long blocks, with 
> application-specific markup, so I don't really understand why there 
> shouldn't be a largely 1:1 mapping between the markup systems.

It's not about source code display. It is about the other 200
typographic features that we use in the Python documentation.

>  * Conversion could be very time consuming, for the parts that can't be 
> automated

If the conversion cannot be fully automatic, that would indicate that
there will be a loss of information. Likely, this loss is unacceptable.

> Anyway, I thought the whole point behind the docutils initiative was to 
> create a doc format that could be used anywhere Python needs docs, ala 
> Perl's POD.

I'm still uncertain what the point behind the docutils initiative is.

Regards,
Martin