PEP 287: reStructuredText Standard Docstring Format

[Paul Rubin]

Richard Jones <rjones at ekit-inc.com> writes:
> What's the value in this statement? Nowhere does it state that it is 
> mandatory that python programmers write their docstrings in ReST. Only that 
> there will be tools available for those that do.

Well, nothing is mandatory without legislation by congress, but I
thought the idea of structured doc strings was to have cool tools that
use them, and for those to be useful, the doc string format has to be
widely used and accepted.  If you just want a few
especially-interested people writing doc strings that way, you don't
need a PEP--just start using whatever format you want.