PYDOC replacement. (Was:Sorting attributes by catagory)

[Nick Vatamaniuc]

On May 10, 1:28 am, Ron Adam <r... at ronadam.com> wrote:
> Nick Vatamaniuc wrote:
> > Ron,
>
> > Consider using epydoc if you can. Epydoc will sort the methods and it
> > will also let you use custom CSS style sheets for the final HTML
> > output. Check out the documentation of my PyDBTable module.
> >http://www.psipy.com/PyDBTable
>
> > -Nick Vatamaniuc
>
> Hi Nick,
>
> I already have sorting and style sheets taken care of.  I'm just trying to
> get the content of each sub section correct at this point.  The overall
> frame work is finished.
>
> I don't think Epydoc can replace the console help() output.  The site.py
> module imports help(), from pydoc.py.  That serves as the consoles
> interactive help mode.  When you type help() at the console, you are using
> pydoc.
>
> Some of the differences...
>
> Epydoc
> ------
>      Output formats:
>          - html files
>          - graphs  (requires Graphviz)  I like this!
>          - pdf files   (requires latex)
>
>      * Requires explicitly generating files first.
>      * Supports file parsing only instead of introspection.
>
> Epydoc is more of a complete application and has many nice features such as
> the graphs and completeness checks, that will make it better than pydoc for
> creating more complete pre-generated html documents with less work.
>
> Pydoc
> =====
>      Output formats:
>          - live interactive console text
>          - live interactive html with a local html server.
>              * no files are generated.  (just in the browser cache)
>              * supports custom CSS stylesheets
>
>         (API data output...)
>          - text
>          - html page
>          - html section     (for use in templates)
>          - xml
>          - reST      (not yet, but will be easy to do)
>
> The reason for having additional output formats is it makes it much easier
> to use it as a tool to extract documentation from source code to be
> combined with existing more complete documentation.
>
> I am planning on writing output formatters to return docutils and docbook
> data structures as well. With those, you will be able to convert to latex,
> pdf, and other formats.  The data formats for those are very close to what
> I'm using, so this should be easy to do.
>
> Other side benefits of doing this is that some of the modules in pydoc have
> been generalized so that they can be used without pydoc.  The html server,
> and the document data and formatter classes, can be used independently of
> pydoc.
>
> The overall total size has not increased much, and it is more modular,
> maintainable, and extendable.  Maintainability is a major concern for any
> library module or package.
>
> Of course it will need to be approved first.  ;-)
>
> Cheers,
>     Ron

Thanks for the info, Ron. I had no idea pydoc was that powerful!
-Nick