[Numpy-discussion] Module Index for numpy?

[denis]

On 17/01/2010 18:57, Wayne Watson wrote:
> I was just looking at the (Win) Python documentation via the Help on
> IDLE, and a Global Module Index. Does anything like that exist for
> numpy, matplotlib, scipy?

Wayne, folks,

   may I second the wish / the need for searching thousands of functions.

Fwiw, grep makes a crude but very fast source tree browser:
1) grep class + def + first docstring lines in numpy/...py (re, no import);
this looks like

	-- numpy/compat/setupscons.py
	def configuration(parent_package='',top_path=None):

	-- numpy/core/arrayprint.py
	def product(x, y): return x*y
	def set_printoptions(precision=None, threshold=None, edgeitems=None,
	def get_printoptions():
	    """ Return the current print options.
	def array2string(a, max_line_width = None, precision = None,
	...

2) grep2 that, i.e. grep + previous ^-- line.
numpy.defs is 6k lines, 230k, grep time ~ .25 sec.


What do we really want --
  - a source browser GUI, pyqt or webbrowser
  - or a better text pydoc
  - or full-text search -- Robert Kern has suggested his Whoosh
?
We could get together a table of existing GUIs and desiderata,
sort by sum(features) / time-to-write-a-manual (not time-to-hack).
Or,
	o'er forms of doc let fools contest,
	what's best written is the best.

cheers
   -- denis