An Alternative Python Reference

Fredrik Lundh | January 2006

I’ve been playing with a new light-weight source format (and associated tools) for the official Python library reference, based on a mix of HTML and PythonDoc-style markup. The main goal is to get rid of the current heavy-weight toolchain, and open up for web-based maintenance of the reference material, without losing the current level of semantic information.

Current building blocks:

• A new source format, based on JavaDoc/PythonDoc [see “markup“]
• An information model for the Python reference that provides unique names for all documentation targets [see “targets“]
• A collection of simple tools and components to process, validate, and analyze reference documentation.

Dynamic tools, inspired by the AltPyDotOrgCMS work, are also in the pipeline.

Links:

Using PythonDoc-style Markup for the Library Reference

Sample Output

Markup

Targets

Sections (in progress)

Style

Selected online.effbot.org articles:

Valid HTML Output

Checking For Non-Existent Targets

Simple Linking

Auto-Generated Module Indexes

Module Count

Related stuff (in one way or another):

html2db

An Alternative Python.Org Content Management System