Georg Brandl wrote:
My proposal: Since we already give a Python-like signature, why not give the
full signature for Python functions? That is, simply show default values for
arguments like
warnings.filterwarnings(action, message="", category=Warning, module="",
lineno=0, append=0)
That way, we also can get rid of awkward tons of parenthetical remarks like
in "If foo is None (which is the default)", and also get to add that information
in the first place where it was missing before.
The argument defaults can be shown in a different typographical style if
desired. Parameters whose default isn't easily displayable can continue to use
the brackets.
I think that would be fine. Maybe a separate section can be added on the
topic of understanding function arguments that uses the nested bracketed
forms to help users understand python signatures.
I was hoping at some point we might be able to generate the signatures and
summary automatically from the source, and merge in the discussion and
examples. But currently generating signatures isn't possible for all
functions.
BTW... Have you tried out the pydoc patch I submitted George? I haven't
got any feedback on it yet, so it's just sitting there gathering dust.
http://bugs.python.org/issue2001
Ron
For C module functions that don't support keyword arguments, the old way of
nested brackets precisely represents how to call the function, so it should
stay.
Sadly, this proposal is also the most work-intensive one since no automatic
conversion is possible. This being the docs, it is however possible to tackle
this over time on a per-module basis, so this is not necessarily a killer
argument.
Georg
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