docpicture

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:12:59 -0700, Scott David Daniels wrote:

> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> And if not, it's no big deal. Your help string has a clearly labeled
>> few lines of hex:
>> 
>> Help on function spam:
>> 
>> spam(...)
>>     spam spam spam spam spam spam
>>     spam spam spam spam with a fried egg on top
>> 
>>     === begin docpicture ===
>>     1234567890ABCDEF...
>>     === end docpicture ===
>> Or similar. I'm sure people will cope, especially since it should be
>> relatively rare.
>> 
> or you could even use:
>        '''<docpicture name="fig1.png" code="base64" version="1">
>        1234567890ABCDEF...
>        </docpicture>'''
> A comment _not_ a docstring (only found by scanning the source). which
> is easy enough to hunt for.

+1 for docpictures

-1 for them being comments instead of docstrings. The whole point of 
having them is to allow Python tools to operate on them. I should be able 
to do this:


>>> import docpicture
>>> docpicture.gui(myfunction)


and get a nice Tk window showing the picture. There's all sorts of 
functionality that you lose by making them comments and therefore 
unavailable to Python tools. (Okay, technically this hypothetical 
docpicture module could scan the source file -- assuming the source code 
is even available, which isn't always true.)

But anyway, we're getting well ahead of ourselves here. Unless bearophile 
is willing to share his code, or somebody reverse engineers it, this is 
nothing more than vapourware.


-- 
Steven