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Re: [pygame] Using reStructuredText for document sources
Hi Lenard,
when I wrote my convert script [1] I reached a point when I found it
easier to edit the output (rst files) manually instead of implementing
proper handling for all the special cases etc. So maybe it would be
better to take my rst-files and continue to improve them (fix last
markup fix and improve content) as the convert script would be only used
this single time. Then you can replace the .doc files in the source with
the rst-files and some sphinx project files for building etc. in a doc
or ref folder.
To the structure: I think the basic structure (module -> classes ->
methods) is standard. But the way of documenting stuff could be really
improved with the features of rst markup (and maybe sphinx
plug-ins/extensions or however they call it). For example,
"hugoruscitti" added images to the docs of the transform module. I like
it a lot as it shows instantly what each single method does and also
makes the page easier to read as it breaks this big text-only block. The
template/style for the html-generator could be edited to fit into the
pygame.org webpage (if not the other way round :-) ). The comments
feature of the current solution is quite useful, but the result is that
the comments are not merged into the main documentation and so an
offline version of the docs is more or less useless (at least for some
modules or functions). So removing the comment feature would remove
spam, very long and hence wrong placed example programs and stupid
"hello world/this is cool/..." dummy comments from the docs. If someone
has a serious interest to improve the docs somewhere it should not be
too hard to post a new version (or just a note that a certain part
should be improved) on the mailing list.
In general, I'm absolutely convinced that a migragion of the pygame
documentation to a rst/sphinx based system would be an huge improvement
for pygame. It would be a lot easier for more people to participate in
writing and improving documentation. The markup would be standardized
(well, kind of) and the output would be flexible (you can generate
documentation as webpage, pdf, etc.)
To use a wiki could be better than the current solution, but you'd need
to moderate it, remove spam/stupid and/or wrong content/etc. -> work, no
one has time for.
Regards,
Julian
[1]
https://bitbucket.org/schlangen/pygame-docs/src/00217ff414bb/scripts/make_new_ref.py
Am 04.03.2011 00:09, schrieb Lenard Lindstrom:
Hi everyone,
It seems that as useful as it has been makeref,py, the custom Pygame
document generator, is showing its age. It makes little sense to
continue maintaining makeref.py when other, more powerful, document
generators are available off-the-shelf. So I am proposing to convert
Pygame's custom .doc files to reSTructuredText, and have docutils and
Sphinx generate the documents. As well as being the tool chain used to
produce the Python documents, Marcus uses reST for pgreloaded. Also,
Julian (jug) has translated the Pygame doc source to reST once
already. But I admit I did not fully appreciated his efforts at the time.
I am already improving the makeref.py tokenizer for use in a Pygame
DOC to reST translator. Julian already wrote a makeref.py based
translator. I hope to using his reST version of the Pygame doc sources
as a guide for a translator that produces reST files closer to the
final product. If nothing else, makeref.py will generate somewhat
cleaner web pages.
Before going any further I need to know what to keep from the current
Pygame document layout, what should change, and what can be added. I
suppose this has been discussed before, but I kind of missed it. Also,
if there are objections to moving to reST now is the time to raise them.
Lenard Lindstrom