[Python-3000] PEP 3124 - Overloading, Generic Functions, Interfaces, etc.

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 02:40 PM 5/10/2007 +1200, Greg Ewing wrote:
>Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> > For
> > example, objects to be documented with pydoc currently have to
> > reverse engineer a bunch of inspection code, while in a GF-based
> > design they'd just add methods.
>
>There's a problem with this that I haven't seen a good
>answer to yet. To add a method to a generic function,
>you have to import the module that defines the base
>function. So any module that wants its objects documented
>in a custom way ends up depending on pydoc.

Using the "Importing" package from the Cheeseshop:

def register_pydoc(pydoc):

     @when(pydoc.get_signature)
     def signature_for_mytype(ob:MyType)
         # etc.

     @when(pydoc.get_contents)
     def contents_for_mytype(ob:MyType)
         # etc.

from peak.util.imports import whenImported
whenImported('pydoc', register_pydoc)


I certainly wouldn't object to making 'whenImported' and its friends 
a part of the stdlib.


>There's also the possibility that other documentation
>systems could make use of the same protocol if it's
>designed appropriately, whereas extending pydoc-defined
>generic functions benefits pydoc and nothing else.

Of course; it's actually somewhat more likely that the basic GFs 
should actually live in "inspect" (or something like it) rather than 
in "pydoc" per se.