[issue4758] Python 3.0 internet documentation needs work

[David M. Beazley]

New submission from David M. Beazley <beazley at users.sourceforge.net>:

I have recently completed a pretty thorough survey of library 
documentation for Python 3.0 in conjunction with an update I'm making to 
my book.   This issue is not so much a bug as a documentation request.

For all of the library modules related to network programming, it would 
be extremely useful to be much very explicit about what methods work 
with strings and what methods requires byte.  So many of these modules 
operate on small fragments of data (e.g., send a request, add a header, 
parse a query string, etc.).  Sometimes using a string is okay, 
sometimes it's not and sadly, it's not often predictable.   Part of the 
problem is that the documentation has been written for a Python 2 world 
where text strings and binary data were interchangeable.

Anyways, this request minimally covers these modules:
 
      ftplib
      smtplib
      nntplib
      http.*
      urllib.*
      xmlrpc.*
      socketserver
      asynchat
      asyncore
    
If there is interest, I can submit more detailed notes from my own work, 
but I'm not sure how the documentation maintainer would want this.  
Separate issue for each?   Added as comments here?   Please advise.

----------
assignee: georg.brandl
components: Documentation
messages: 78361
nosy: beazley, georg.brandl
severity: normal
status: open
title: Python 3.0 internet documentation needs work
type: feature request
versions: Python 3.0

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue4758>
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