[SciPy-dev] change print statements to print functions in docstrings

[David Goldsmith]

I'm sorry, I honestly didn't foresee my comments touching such a nerve; really now, turning this thread into a debate on the merits of IPython - well, that really should be a separate thread (at the very least), IMHO. :-)

DG

--- On Sat, 8/15/09, josef.pktd at gmail.com <josef.pktd at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: josef.pktd at gmail.com <josef.pktd at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [SciPy-dev] change print statements to print functions in docstrings
> To: "SciPy Developers List" <scipy-dev at scipy.org>
> Date: Saturday, August 15, 2009, 5:34 PM
> On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 8:09 PM,
> Robert Kern<robert.kern at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 18:05, David Goldsmith<d_l_goldsmith at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >> --- On Sat, 8/15/09, Gael Varoquaux <gael.varoquaux at normalesup.org>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> But how does this fit with the fact that
> people using
> >>> IPython are seeing
> >>> this change (I believe that's the third time I
> ask the
> >>
> >> I don't know: how universally used is IPython?
>  I'm only installing it now on account of the tutorials;
> otherwise, so far, I've seen no need to and probably
> wouldn't, but am in the minority?  I honestly don't know
> (and suspect that no one has the global usage statistics to
> say for sure).  In other words, are we going to let the
> "problems" arising in one specialty package govern the
> behavior for the baseline library?
> >
> > It's not universal (nothing is), but it is immensely
> popular among our
> > install-base. You see no need for it *now*, but just
> wait until you've
> > taken it out for a spin for a while.
> >
> > Its features are important to consider sometimes. For
> example, some of
> > the decisions about the formatting of the
> documentation (particularly
> > readable plaintext math) were driven by the large use
> of IPython's "?"
> > feature for reading docstrings (the builtin help() is
> similar in
> > functionality but more cumbersome; I doubt I would
> have been as
> > insistent about readable plaintext if the alternatives
> were just
> > reading the HTML and help()).
> >
> > However, I don't think incidental bugs in IPython
> should drive design choices.
> >
> > --
> > Robert Kern
> 
> Just out of curiosity, do you have a rough guesstimate on
> the fraction
> on Windows users in the install base, and if a sizable
> fraction of
> them is using ipython?
> 
> At least on the mailing list, Windows users seem to be a
> small
> minority, but that could also be a strong selection bias.
> I'm one of the silent minority that never got friendly with
> ipython
> even after several tries.
> 
> Josef
> 
> 
> >
> > "I have come to believe that the whole world is an
> enigma, a harmless
> > enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to
> interpret it as
> > though it had an underlying truth."
> >  -- Umberto Eco
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Scipy-dev at scipy.org
> > http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-dev
> >
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