[Doc-SIG] A draft for a "defining new types" chapter for ext.tex

[Fred L. Drake, Jr.]

Michael Hudson writes:
 > After various people noticing that there is no documentation at all for
 > defining new types for python in the standard docs I set to work:
 > 
 > http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~mwh21/hacks/ext/defining-new-types.html

  I'll take a look at this; hopefully later today.  Do I have
permission to integrate this into the existing documentation?

 > It's not even nearly finished; I would like to add sections on supporting
 > GC, coercion, rich comparisons &c (partly because documenting such things
 > would force me to learn about them!).  But I would like to see what people
 > think.

  I have some text from Neil Schemenauer on adding GC support to
objects; I'll try and integrate that before the upcoming beta.

 > (a) to define a new type really you need to understand how Python is
 >     implemented.  So perhaps I should write a Python-Internals-HOWTO
 >     first.

  That might even reasonably be part of the Extending & Embedding
manual, given the necessity of understanding the material.  If you
write it, it's pretty much your call where it goes.

 > (b) The Extending and Embedding Manual could really do with being entirely
 >     rewritten.

  Yep!

 > (c) It's hard to think of a sensible order to write such a thing in
 >     without lots of circular dependencies (of the form you need to read
 >     chapter I to understand chapter II, but to understand chapter I you
 >     need to have read chapter III which requires understanding chapter
 >     II...).

  Sure!  It'll open when my kids are on there own, so it will be a
while before it's available.  ;-)


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fdrake at acm.org>
PythonLabs at Digital Creations