[issue2774] ctypes documentation not effective

[Bill Janssen]

New submission from Bill Janssen <bill.janssen at gmail.com>:

Once again I'm reading through the ctypes documentation and finding it
wildly confusing/contradictory.  For instance, there's no discussion of
how ctypes types interact with malloc and free.  The tutorial section is
discursive and rambling.  The type "c_size_t" isn't mentioned in the
section labelled "Fundamental Data Types", but does show up in another
section also labelled "Fundamental Data Types".  The "reference" doesn't
document the use of pointers or arrays.  I find it hard to see how
anyone who doesn't read the ctypes code (several times) could find out
how to use it from the documentation.

I'd suggest getting rid of the Tutorial section, moving it to a
standalone document somewhere, and finishing the writing of the
Reference section.  Adding a chapter discussing when to use ctypes and
when to use the C API might also be a good idea.

----------
assignee: georg.brandl
components: Documentation
messages: 66319
nosy: georg.brandl, janssen
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: ctypes documentation not effective
type: performance
versions: Python 2.6, Python 3.0

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