[PYTHON DOC-SIG] Documentation enhancements

[Andrew Kuchling]

G. Berriz also suggested having a note at the start of the index: "If
you notice omissions, please help save the world and drop a note to
XXX@python.org", where XXX is some mail alias for Guido or an editor,
or possibly XXX='doc-sig'.

The Tkinter life preserver is something I hadn't thought of; how long
is it?  (Place reference to the Monty Python lifeboat sketch here.)
However, if Frederik is revising it for inclusion in his book,
O'Reilly would have to agree to allowing republication of those
sections.

Regarding the tutorial: the later sections seem to contain two sorts
of items.  Some are just informational ChangeLog-like things ("The
Macintosh version is much more robust now."  "The string module now
has a capwords() function.") which can be cut out and put in another
file, and others are actual language changes, which will need to be
integrated into the text.  Tutorial readers probably don't care about
the interpreter's past history.

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> (In fact, some chapters of the library manual, e.g. the SGI and Mac
> specific parts, might be left out too.)

	Good point.  One might also wonder if the SGI-specific modules
should be dropped from the distribution; Python isn't only (or even
mostly) on SGIs these days, and time seems to be taking its toll on
them---there's a more recent OpenGL interface, PIL for image
processing...

>So I don't think it will be a big PR item.

	Ah, but the HTML documentation would also benefit from
improvements, and that is highly visible.  People may also lend the
book to others when evangelizing.


	Andrew Kuchling
	amk@magnet.com
	http://people.magnet.com/%7Eamk/
Save the Gutenberg Project! http://www.promo.net/pg/nl/pgny_nov96.html


_______________
DOC-SIG  - SIG for the Python Documentation Project

send messages to: doc-sig@python.org
administrivia to: doc-sig-request@python.org
_______________