More random python observations from a perl programmer

[Robert Kern]

On Thu, 19 Aug 1999 12:19:00 -0600, Tom Christiansen
<tchrist at jhereg.perl.com> wrote:

>>Yup.  It says that Windows help is useful for more people than icky
>>manpages.  
>
>No, it means that it's considered ok to alienate people who expect manpages.

Not really.  I have never seen anyone express a desire for manpages
before today.  There was a large discussion some time back on Python's
documentation.  While I didn't read every post of that discussion, I
don't recall anyone requesting manpages.  Many people were requesting
something like pod, though.  :-)

The reason we have Windows help files for Python's documentation is
because someone in the Python community (not Fred Drake, the official
documentation maintainer) wanted them and did the necessary work to
provide them.  The reason we don't have UNIX manpages is because not
enough people (if any besides you) have asked for them or done the
work.  Fred is always willing to accept volunteers, though.

In the meantime, python(1), which should be installed automatically by
the Makefile (if it didn't, the file "python.man" is in the Misc/
subdirectory of the source package), will refer you to the Python
Tutorial, the Python Library Reference, and the Python Reference
Manual.  Unfortunately, what it doesn't mention is the URL for getting
this documentation.  This is a holdover from the time before the
source and documentation were split into separate distributions.  If
nothing else is done about manpages, this oversight should be fixed.
Fred?

>--tom

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