How to Customize the New 2.7 ArgumentParser Library Class (module argparse)?

[Tom Browder]

I have converted from OptionParser to ArgumentParser (new in version
2.7) to great advantage, and I think it's a great improvement!  But
now I want to customize the help formatting just a bit.

The documentation is sketchy here, but I started by subclassing
ArgumentParser and attempted to redefine format_usage, but after
looking at the detailed instructions with pydoc I see "the API of the
formatter objects is still considered an implementation detail."

I take that to mean I should abandon such efforts at the moment.

So, using the defined class as is, and following instructions in the
online docs, I have been able to get my output to look like this:

==============>
$ test_argparser.py -h
usage: test_argparser.py [options]

A program to manipulate user programs.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help      Show this help message and exit.
  -v, --version  Show program's version number and exit.
  -s, --show     Show a list of user post-processing programs.

Version 2010-08-20.01
<==============

To beautify things I would like to change two strings which are
auto-generated by the standard parser:

1.  change "usage:"

to  "Usage:"   # capitalize 'usage'

2.  change "optional arguments:"

to "Optional arguments:"  # capitalize 'Optional'

Does anyone know how to do it without modifying source code?

Thanks,

-Tom

Thomas M. Browder, Jr.
Niceville, Florida
USA