[Python-ideas] Linking Doug's stdlib documentation to our main modules doc.

[Terry Reedy]

On 3/20/2011 2:33 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

> To those who see these links as a bad idea, who are you afraid it will
> hurt? We have an immediate target audience that we think it will help:
> new Python users that will read the docs and follow the links there.

I believe that sending new Python 3 users to Python 2 examples can 
confuse them and burden them with obsolete (for them) concerns and in 
that sense hurt them. I have the impression from python-list that a 
substantial proportion of new users now begin with Python 3, and I 
expect that proportion to grow substantially in the next year or two. 
Others start with 2.6, whose docs are frozen, for complete external 
library access.

...
[snip]
> 2. What about link rot and obsolete material?
>
> PyMOTW has an active maintainer  ..

who has recently updated them to 2.7 and *might* do a 3.x version in the 
future. But they are currently obsolete relative to 3.2.

> these become a problem, either the links can then be dropped from new
> versions of the documentation,

Since there will be no new 2.x versions I find this confusing.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy