python doc available in emacs info format?

python doc available in emacs info format?

[Xah Lee]

btw, is there still info format for python doc?

i feel kinda sad that emacs info format has pretty much been
deprecated over the past decade. About a decade ago, you still will
see now and then people asking for emacs info format of docs (was the
days of perl). Today, one don't hear of it.

Part of this is due to emacs cult problem. See:

• Emacs Modernization
  http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_modernization.html

• Emacs Should Adopt HTML To Replace Texinfo
  http://xahlee.org/emacs/modernization_html_vs_info.html

• Language, Purity, Cult, and Deception
  http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/lang_purity_cult_deception.html

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

On Dec 11 2008, 6:56 am, Matthias <oron...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> writes:
> > in programing elisp in emacs, i can press “Ctrl+h f” to lookup
> > the doc for the function under cursor.   is there such facility
> > when coding in perl, python, php?
>
> Yes, try C-h S (or similarly <f1> S):
>
>      (info-lookup-symbol SYMBOL &optional MODE)  Display the
> definition of SYMBOL, as found in the relevant manual. When this
> command is called interactively, it reads SYMBOL from the
> minibuffer.
>
> Note that `the relevant manual' means an info file. With recent
> emacsen on an Ubuntu distro, python arrives with info files and
> everything is well configured. It also works with bash, latex, perl,
> scheme, elisp, awk, texinfo, makefile, libc, or any info file with an
> index.
> --
> Matthias

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[Xah Lee]

info format for Xah Lee writes:
> in programing elisp in emacs, i can press “Ctrl+h f” to lookup
> the doc for the function under cursor.   is there such facility
> when coding in perl, python, php?


 On Dec 11 2008, 6:56 am, Matthias <oron...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, try C-h S (or similarly <f1> S):

>      (info-lookup-symbol SYMBOL &optional MODE)  Display the
> definition of SYMBOL, as found in the relevant manual. When this
> command is called interactively, it reads SYMBOL from the
> minibuffer.

> Note that `the relevant manual' means an info file. With recent
> emacsen on an Ubuntu distro, python arrives with info files and
> everything is well configured. It also works with bash, latex, perl,
> scheme, elisp, awk, texinfo, makefile, libc, or any info file with an
> index.

I noticed that Matthias actually mentioned that info docs is available
and bundled out of the box on Ubuntu linux for many popular langs, as
of 2008-12.

Is that true? Where can i download these info files? As far as i know,
a little google search or official doc sites usually don't have a
download for info format.

I'm interested in getting current version doc for perl, python, php,
and ruby.

Thanks.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[Colin S. Miller]

Xah Lee wrote:
> btw, is there still info format for python doc?
> 
> i feel kinda sad that emacs info format has pretty much been
> deprecated over the past decade. About a decade ago, you still will
> see now and then people asking for emacs info format of docs (was the
> days of perl). Today, one don't hear of it.
> 
> Part of this is due to emacs cult problem. See:
> 

Xah,

Please do not slag off a project if you want people to help;
it tends to put the goat up.

It is not "Emacs Info" format, it is FSF Info format.
There is a stand-alone program to read the Info documentation.
The program is called "info".



Ubuntu maintains a package search site, it is on
http://packages.ubuntu.com/

However, there seems to be no files named
python.*info   (regexp)

There is a
python-docutils package
which does contain information in several
other formats.

This package can be found either via the above site
or using "apt-cache search python-doc".


As "info" is a FSF format, all FSF produced programs
will provide documentation in this format. However Python
is not under the auspices of the FSF, so does not need to use
this format.


BTW,
HTML versions of INFO documentation can be generated by
info2html or info_to_html on them, or texi2html on the source.


Have a nice day,
Colin S. Miller

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[Bruce Stephens]

"Colin S. Miller" <no-spam-thank-you@csmiller.demon.co.uk> writes:

[...]

> Ubuntu maintains a package search site, it is on
> http://packages.ubuntu.com/
>
> However, there seems to be no files named
> python.*info   (regexp)

And yet there are info files in python2.5-doc:
<http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/all/python2.5-doc/filelist>.

[...]

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[Xah Lee]

> Please do not slag off a project if you want people to help;
> it tends to put the goat up.

a healthy community needs both positive comment as well as negative to
grow.

emacs's user base has been rotting off from i estimate more than 50%
of programers to less that 1% today.

the particular observation about info doc in this thread is a specific
example.

You can help FSF and emacs to improve, by, for example, trying to help
it to evolve with the rapidly changing computing industry, In this
case, document formats, provided if you see some of my points as
valid. Or, at least consider this eroding awareness of the gnu info
format among average programers worth discussing. No disrespect to
you, but dismissing it as “troll” or similiar sentiment is not
helpful.

emacs community is too much cult and pride. FSF and its product the
GNU was highly successful in the 1980 and 1990s, with its gcc, emacs,
and slew of gnu version of unix tools. A significant part of the
reason is because these products at the time is truely better products
in comparison to existing ones, that there are almost no substitute.
Today, for many variety and complexity of reasons, almost none of this
is true, except possiblly a few such as gcc and GPG. The unix shells
ways and sed, awk, etc tools has largely been replaced by perl,
python, ruby etc, partly due to the changing nature of computing. For
GCC itself, and make, yacc, bison etc there are tens of competiting
products either commercial or open source. Then there's Java, with its
entire suite of tools and libs, and there are tens of truely quality
languages out there today other then the ones that GCC can handle.

emacs 23, although is fantastic to us emacs fans, but if you look
carefully at its feature list, most of it is widely in commericial
software about 10 years ago.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄


On Aug 17, 4:32 am, "Colin S. Miller" <no-spam-
thank-...@csmiller.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Xah Lee wrote:
> > btw, is there still info format for python doc?
>
> > i feel kinda sad that emacs info format has pretty much been
> > deprecated over the past decade. About a decade ago, you still will
> > see now and then people asking for emacs info format of docs (was the
> > days of perl). Today, one don't hear of it.
>
> > Part of this is due to emacs cult problem. See:
>
> Xah,
>
> Please do not slag off a project if you want people to help;
> it tends to put the goat up.
>
> It is not "Emacs Info" format, it is FSF Info format.
> There is a stand-alone program to read the Info documentation.
> The program is called "info".
>
> Ubuntu maintains a package search site, it is onhttp://packages.ubuntu.com/
>
> However, there seems to be no files named
> python.*info   (regexp)
>
> There is a
> python-docutils package
> which does contain information in several
> other formats.
>
> This package can be found either via the above site
> or using "apt-cache search python-doc".
>
> As "info" is a FSF format, all FSF produced programs
> will provide documentation in this format. However Python
> is not under the auspices of the FSF, so does not need to use
> this format.
>
> BTW,
> HTML versions of INFO documentation can be generated by
> info2html or info_to_html on them, or texi2html on the source.
>
> Have a nice day,
> Colin S. Miller

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:43:48 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> i feel kinda sad that emacs info format has pretty much been
> deprecated over the past decade.

Deprecated in favor of what alternatives?

The Info format has several valuable features that ``modern'' formats
such as HTML lacks: e.g., indices with the associated index-search
features.  Without these features, using a manual as a reference (as
opposed to a book or tutorial you read for the first time) is a
nuisance, especially if the manual is large and complex, like the
Emacs manuals.

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[Jason Earl]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com>
>> Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:43:48 -0700 (PDT)
>> 
>> i feel kinda sad that emacs info format has pretty much been
>> deprecated over the past decade.
>
> Deprecated in favor of what alternatives?

In the case of Python the alternative was Sphinx

http://sphinx.pocoo.org/

As someone that has written my share of documentation, I can't
understand why anyone would push to make that switch, but that's what
has happened.  Sphinx generates beautiful HTML, but generating HTML is
the easiest part of the job for any documentation tool.

> The Info format has several valuable features that ``modern'' formats
> such as HTML lacks: e.g., indices with the associated index-search
> features.  Without these features, using a manual as a reference (as
> opposed to a book or tutorial you read for the first time) is a
> nuisance, especially if the manual is large and complex, like the
> Emacs manuals.

There's no question that the Info format, and Texinfo in general are
nice.  The real problem is that most folks, even in the Free Software
world, who are writing documentation have shifted away from Emacs.  At
least in the case of Sphinx this has basically resulted in reinventing
Texinfo, except AucTeX doesn't work with Sphinx's format.  As an added
bonus if the print version looks bad then you get to edit the
autogenerated LaTeX that Sphinx spits out.

It's easy for those of us that use Emacs to shake our heads that this
turn of events, but the real problem with formats like Texinfo (or
TeX-based formats in general) is that Emacs is basically the only sane
way to edit the formats.  I like Texinfo, for example, but I wouldn't
even dream of editing Texinfo in something besides Emacs.

Then again, Emacs is probably the only sane way to edit reStructuredText
as well.

Jason

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[Sean Sieger]

Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com> writes:

    I noticed that Matthias actually mentioned that info docs is available
    and bundled out of the box on Ubuntu linux for many popular langs, as
    of 2008-12.

    Is that true? Where can i download these info files? As far as i know,
    a little google search or official doc sites usually don't have a
    download for info format.

    I'm interested in getting current version doc for perl, python, php,
    and ruby.

On Ubuntu GNU/Linux:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install perl-doc php-doc python2.5-doc rdoc

Certainly perldoc is available at CTAN, the latest sources for python
info docs are in the tarball,

http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.2/Python-2.6.2.tgz

and so on.

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[Sean Sieger]

Sean Sieger <sean.sieger@gmail.com> writes:

    Certainly perldoc is available at CTAN, the latest sources for python
    info docs are in the tarball,

Excuse me, that should read CPAN not CTAN---love both of those
resources.

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[Jason Earl]

Sean Sieger <sean.sieger@gmail.com> writes:

> Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com> writes:
>
>     I noticed that Matthias actually mentioned that info docs is available
>     and bundled out of the box on Ubuntu linux for many popular langs, as
>     of 2008-12.
>
>     Is that true? Where can i download these info files? As far as i know,
>     a little google search or official doc sites usually don't have a
>     download for info format.
>
>     I'm interested in getting current version doc for perl, python, php,
>     and ruby.
>
> On Ubuntu GNU/Linux:
>
> sudo aptitude update
> sudo aptitude install perl-doc php-doc python2.5-doc rdoc
>
> Certainly perldoc is available at CTAN, the latest sources for python
> info docs are in the tarball,
>
> http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.6.2/Python-2.6.2.tgz
>
> and so on.

Are you sure that the 2.6 and up tarballs for Python include
documentation in info format?  I've downloaded the tarball in your link,
and I can't find it.  What's more the documentation Makefile has targets
for html, htmlhelp, latex, text, but no info formats.

Jason

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[A.Politz]

On Aug 17, 6:43 am, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> btw, is there still [no] info format for python doc?
>
> i feel kinda sad [...]
> Part of this is due to [other peoples fault]

Someone started a rst2info project (google it), maybe you want to help
this guy out.

Though, he might be a techgeeker, so watch out !

-ap

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[Nathan Keel]

A.Politz wrote:

> On Aug 17, 6:43 am, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> btw, is there still [no] info format for python doc?
>>
>> i feel kinda sad [...]
>> Part of this is due to [other peoples fault]
> 
> Someone started a rst2info project (google it), maybe you want to help
> this guy out.
> 
> Though, he might be a techgeeker, so watch out !
> 
> -ap

Don't bother with this Xah Lee clown.  He posts random crap because he
thinks everyone wants to hear what he has to say about unrelated
subject material and thinks he looks smart for doing it. Unfortunately,
he usually lacks a clue about any topic he brings up (and he always
starts a new thread like he's some authority).  His goals are nothing
more than to post arrogant, clueless rants thinking he's showing off. 
this is why he ALWAYS cross posts to the same groups (Emacs, Python,,
Perl, etc.), even when the topic or content has nothing to do with
those things.  He thinks people in these groups automatically respect
him, when most have killfiled him.

Re: python doc available in emacs info format?

[Sean Sieger]

Jason Earl <jearl@notengoamigos.org> writes:

    Are you sure that the 2.6 and up tarballs for Python include
    documentation in info format?

Nope.

Sorry about the erroneous post.  It was an overeager---and careless---
attempt to contribute to xahmacs.