[Numpy-discussion] #734: interactive docstring search (lookfor)

[Fernando Perez]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 3:29 PM, Joris De Ridder
<Joris.DeRidder at ster.kuleuven.be> wrote:
>
>  On 10 Apr 2008, at 23:23, Travis E. Oliphant wrote:
>
>  > Cool.  I started scipy.misc.info a long time ago to try and do
>  > this.   I
>  > didn't advertise it well enough ;-)
>
>  Yep, I also started to write my own docsearch tool but neglected to
>  advertise it.
>
>
>
>
>  On 10 Apr 2008, at 23:58, Gael Varoquaux wrote:
>
>  > Numpy is not the place where this should go. This should go in eg
>  > ipython, which provides an interactiv frontend. One of the reasons is
>  > that this is certainly not numpy-dependent.
>
>  I kind of disagree here. Such a tool can be made much more intelligent
>  and thus useful if it really hooks into NumPy/SciPy. Provide "See
>  also" functionality, give info on categories of functions, use magic
>  words, etc. None of these things is too difficult to implement.
>  However, such capabilities are beyond the more general docstring
>  search tool that would be suitable for IPython. Of course, no problem
>  if IPython is willing to special-case NumPy/SciPy.

Given how I happen to make a living with numpy/scipy, the answer would be yes ;)

A slightly more proper answer: we can have this special-casing easily
available without 'polluting' the ipython core code, since ipython can
load fairly self-contained features, even automatically.  So this
extension (which Paul just provided as an ipython ticket, thanks!!)
can be loaded only if numpy is around for use.

Cheers,

f