5 :Contact: docutils-develop@lists.sourceforge.net
8 :Copyright: This document has been placed in the public domain.
10 These are notes for a possible future PEP providing the final piece of
11 the Python docstring puzzle: docstring semantics or documentation
12 methodology. `PEP 257`_, Docstring Conventions, sketches out some
13 guidelines, but does not get into methodology details.
15 I haven't explored documentation methodology more because, in my
16 opinion, it is a completely separate issue from syntax, and it's even
17 more controversial than syntax. Nobody wants to be told how to lay
18 out their documentation, a la JavaDoc_. I think the JavaDoc way is
19 butt-ugly, but it *is* an established standard for the Java world.
20 Any standard documentation methodology has to be formal enough to be
21 useful but remain light enough to be usable. If the methodology is
22 too strict, too heavy, or too ugly, many/most will not want to use it.
24 I think a standard methodology could benefit the Python community, but
25 it would be a hard sell. A PEP would be the place to start. For most
26 human-readable documentation needs, the free-form text approach is
27 adequate. We'd only need a formal methodology if we want to extract
28 the parameters into a data dictionary, index, or summary of some kind.
34 (Not to be confused with Daniel Larsson's pythondoc_ project.)
36 A Python version of the JavaDoc_ semantics (not syntax). A set of
37 conventions which are understood by the Docutils. What JavaDoc has
38 done is to establish a syntax that enables a certain documentation
39 methodology, or standard *semantics*. JavaDoc is not just syntax; it
40 prescribes a methodology.
42 - Use field lists or definition lists for "tagged blocks". By this I
43 mean that field lists can be used similarly to JavaDoc's ``@tag``
44 syntax. That's actually one of the motivators behind field lists.
45 For example, we could have::
49 - `lines`: a list of one-line strings without newlines.
50 - `until_blank`: Stop collecting at the first blank line if
52 - `strip_indent`: Strip common leading indent if true (1,
56 - a list of indented lines with mininum indent removed;
57 - the amount of the indent;
58 - whether or not the block finished with a blank line or at
62 This is taken straight out of docutils/statemachine.py, in which I
63 experimented with a simple documentation methodology. Another
64 variation I've thought of exploits the Grouch_-compatible
65 "classifier" element of definition lists. For example::
69 List of one-line strings without newlines.
70 `until_blank` : boolean
71 Stop collecting at the first blank line if true (1).
72 `strip_indent` : boolean
73 Strip common leading indent if true (1, default).
75 - Field lists could even be used in a one-to-one correspondence with
76 JavaDoc ``@tags``, although I doubt if I'd recommend it. Several
77 ports of JavaDoc's ``@tag`` methodology exist in Python, most
78 recently Ed Loper's "epydoc_".
84 - Can we extract comments from parsed modules? Could be handy for
85 documenting function/method parameters::
88 source, # path of input file
89 dest # path of output file
92 This would save having to repeat parameter names in the docstring.
94 Idea from Mark Hammond's 1998-06-23 Doc-SIG post, "Re: [Doc-SIG]
97 it would be quite hard to add a new param to this method without
98 realising you should document it
100 - Frederic Giacometti's `iPhrase Python documentation conventions`_ is
101 an attachment to his Doc-SIG post of 2001-05-30.
104 .. _PEP 257: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0257.html
105 .. _JavaDoc: http://java.sun.com/j2se/javadoc/
106 .. _pythondoc: http://starship.python.net/crew/danilo/pythondoc/
107 .. _Grouch: http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/grouch/
108 .. _epydoc: http://epydoc.sf.net/
109 .. _iPhrase Python documentation conventions:
110 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/doc-sig/2001-May/001840.html
116 indent-tabs-mode: nil
117 sentence-end-double-space: t