[Doc-SIG] docstring grammar

[David Ascher]

On Mon, 29 Nov 1999, Robin Friedrich wrote:

> Some people on this list should remember the development days of gendoc and
> it's cleaner successor pythondoc written by Dan Larsson (gosh I hope I'm not
> the only one)! 

Yes, I remember it.  Thanks for the reminder and pointer, Robin!

> We pleaded back then for ideas/opinions/hacked code to help improve the
> working code Dan wrote but got little response. 

FWIW, I think that one problem gendoc/pythondoc had in terms of strategy
was that it was billed as a 'tool'.  I think that if we establish a
'blessed standard' then any standard-compliant tool has a guaranteed user
base, and has a far greater likelihood of long-term success.  Also, once
the format is documented, then folks who don't like gendoc or for whatever
reason want to do it 'their own way' can still do it in a compatible way.

I'll start digging in gendoc to see the differences between its format and
what I've been discussing.  I'd love to leverage it to build a reference
implementation.

Dan Larsson, are you reading this discussion?  We could use your
experience here!

--david