More random python observations from a perl programmer

[Robert Kern]

On 19 Aug 1999 15:57:54 -0700, Tom Christiansen <tchrist at mox.perl.com>
wrote:

>     [courtesy cc of this posting mailed to cited author]
>
>In comp.lang.python, 
>    kernr at mail.ncifcrf.gov (Robert Kern) writes:
>:This is a holdover from the time before the
>:source and documentation were split into separate distributions.  
>
>Why was this done?  Is this a good thing?   You can't do that with Perl
>modules' documentation because all the module doc is embedded.   We did
>this to avoid a sync problem, and so people could never not have the docs.
>In fact, they can even be links to the same file, e.g. File::stat.3
>linked to and File/stat.pm.  Or do you just mean core docs, not
>module docs were split?  

The core docs (Tutorial, Ref. Manual, Ext. and Emb., etc.) plus the
Library Reference, which, I guess, *is* the module docs (except for
doc strings, which are embedded).  I think that the reasoning behind
the split was to allow Fred to update the documentation between
releases.  For the most part, this is A-Good-Thing, since the
documentation is still incomplete in some regards (probably not enough
to justify a split if we were considering the docs now, but back then
the docs were).

The issue was more of getting the documentation into sync than keeping
it there.  And, generally speaking, there aren't enough sync problems
to justify losing the flexibility of separate distributions (IMO).

>--tom
>-- 
>"IMHO, CAPS LOCK should be somewhere more
>convenient; e.g., in another building."  --jgreely

Robert Kern           |
----------------------|"In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
This space            | Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
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