[Doc-SIG] Forthcoming doc release; request for help

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

  For everyone:  I've posted new packages at:

	ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/doc/.test/

  This version is also online at:

	http://www.python.org/doc/1.5.2p2/

  A major, systematic navigational failure reported by Peter Funk has
been fixed, as well as a number of small fixes being integrated, and a 
note on the removal of multi-arg [].append has been added.

will writes:
 > how do you want us to relate "errors" back to you?  directly, or on
 > this list, or on another list, or bug-tracker?

  The bug tracker is probably the best, but python-docs@python.org is
good too.

 > i've been programming python for a while, but i would just gloss over
 > subtle python inconsistencies.  so i'll stare through the html code,
 > run it through the w3c validator (they do matching of tags and such

  I don't know that the HTML is good to look at; it definately shows
that it's generated!  The validator is a good idea.

 > which is useful), and tell my friends to sift through it with their
 > browsers.  (i know various folks at companies that do web-sites so
 > they have a lot of the browser/os/platform test-beds, i think).  i can

  I hope you're only asking people that don't mind checking this stuff 
for free!

 > beyond that, i'm running IE 5.0 on WinNT 4.0 and Win2000 and M13 on
 > WinNT 4.0 (which i haven't had that many problems with other than the
 > ui).

  Great!  Hopefully I'll manage to install M13 on my home machines
this weekend.

 > i've found a few problems with the code posted at the url.  lines 267
 > and 276 of .../lib/typesseq-strings.html  have stray unmatched <var>
 > and </var> tags.  looking at the web-page (not the html), it's in
 > section 2.1.5.2 Mutabe Sequence Types in the table.  you can actually
 > see two of the parens are in a var enclosure and shouldn't be.  9th
 > and 12th row, first column in the table under 2.1.5.2.

  I see -- this will be hard to fix, but I know where the problem is.
I'll see what I can do.
  For anyone here who really understands LaTeX2HTML's implementation
(there are so many people in that group! ;), the problem is this:  in
perl/python.perl:do_cmd_optional(), I need to be able to determine if
the current markup context include <var>.  If so, it needs to be
closed and re-opened (potentially along with other elements) to insert 
"unmolested" square brackets.  If anyone has any ideas on this, or a
patch to perl/python.perl, I'd love to hear from you!  ;)

 > also links on the modules and index pages turn up 404's.  i may untar
 > the tarball and see if i have the same problems.

  Try the new version, & let me know which specific links are broken
if that's still a problem.


  -Fred

--
Fred L. Drake, Jr.	  <fdrake at acm.org>
Corporation for National Research Initiatives