1   Plan for Enthought API Documentation Tool

Author:David Goodger
Contact:docutils-develop@lists.sourceforge.net
Date:$Date: 2012-01-03 19:23:53 +0000 (Tue, 03 Jan 2012) $
Revision:$Revision: 7302 $
Copyright:2004 by Enthought, Inc.
License:Enthought License (BSD-style)

This document should be read in conjunction with the Enthought API Documentation Tool RFP prepared by Janet Swisher.

1.1   Introduction

In March 2004 at I met Eric Jones, president and CTO of Enthought, Inc., at PyCon 2004 in Washington DC. He told me that Enthought was using reStructuredText for source code documentation, but they had some issues. He asked if I'd be interested in doing some work on a customized API documentation tool. Shortly after PyCon, Janet Swisher, Enthought's senior technical writer, contacted me to work out details. Some email, a trip to Austin in May, and plenty of Texas hospitality later, we had a project. This document will record the details, milestones, and evolution of the project.

In a nutshell, Enthought is sponsoring the implementation of an open source API documentation tool that meets their needs. Fortuitously, their needs coincide well with the "Python Source Reader" description in PEP 258. In other words, Enthought is funding some significant improvements to Docutils, improvements that were planned but never implemented due to time and other constraints. The implementation will take place gradually over several months, on a part-time basis.

This is an ideal example of cooperation between a corporation and an open-source project. The corporation, the project, I personally, and the community all benefit. Enthought, whose commitment to open source is also evidenced by their sponsorship of SciPy, benefits by obtaining a useful piece of software, much more quickly than would have been possible without their support. Docutils benefits directly from the implementation of one of its core subsystems. I benefit from the funding, which allows me to justify the long hours to my wife and family. All the corporations, projects, and individuals that make up the community will benefit from the end result, which will be great.

All that's left now is to actually do the work!

1.2   Development Plan

  1. Analyze prior art, most notably Epydoc and HappyDoc, to see how they do what they do. I have no desire to reinvent wheels unnecessarily. I want to take the best ideas from each tool, combined with the outline in PEP 258 (which will evolve), and build at least the foundation of the definitive Python auto-documentation tool.
  2. Decide on a base platform. The best way to achieve Enthought's goals in a reasonable time frame may be to extend Epydoc or HappyDoc. Or it may be necessary to start fresh.
  3. Extend the reStructuredText parser. See Proposed Changes to reStructuredText below.
  4. Depending on the base platform chosen, build or extend the docstring & doc comment extraction tool. This may be the biggest part of the project, but I won't be able to break it down into details until more is known.

1.3   Repository

If possible, all software and documentation files will be stored in the Subversion repository of Docutils and/or the base project, which are all publicly-available via anonymous pserver access.

The Docutils project is very open about granting Subversion write access; so far, everyone who asked has been given access. Any Enthought staff member who would like Subversion write access will get it.

If either Epydoc or HappyDoc is chosen as the base platform, I will ask the project's administrator for CVS access for myself and any Enthought staff member who wants it. If sufficient access is not granted -- although I doubt that there would be any problem -- we may have to begin a fork, which could be hosted on SourceForge, on Enthought's Subversion server, or anywhere else deemed appropriate.

1.5   Proposed Changes to reStructuredText

1.5.1   Doc Comment Syntax

The "traits" construct is implemented as dictionaries, where standalone strings would be Python syntax errors. Therefore traits require documentation in comments. We also need a way to differentiate between ordinary "internal" comments and documentation comments (doc comments).

Javadoc uses the following syntax for doc comments:

/**
 * The first line of a multi-line doc comment begins with a slash
 * and *two* asterisks.  The doc comment ends normally.
 */

Python doesn't have multi-line comments; only single-line. A similar convention in Python might look like this:

##
# The first line of a doc comment begins with *two* hash marks.
# The doc comment ends with the first non-comment line.
'data' : AnyValue,

## The double-hash-marks could occur on the first line of text,
#  saving a line in the source.
'data' : AnyValue,

How to indicate the end of the doc comment?

##
# The first line of a doc comment begins with *two* hash marks.
# The doc comment ends with the first non-comment line, or another
# double-hash-mark.
##
# This is an ordinary, internal, non-doc comment.
'data' : AnyValue,

## First line of a doc comment, terse syntax.
#  Second (and last) line.  Ends here: ##
# This is an ordinary, internal, non-doc comment.
'data' : AnyValue,

Or do we even need to worry about this case? A simple blank line could be used:

## First line of a doc comment, terse syntax.
#  Second (and last) line.  Ends with a blank line.

# This is an ordinary, internal, non-doc comment.
'data' : AnyValue,

Other possibilities:

#" Instead of double-hash-marks, we could use a hash mark and a
#  quotation mark to begin the doc comment.
'data' : AnyValue,

## We could require double-hash-marks on every line.  This has the
## added benefit of delimiting the *end* of the doc comment, as
## well as working well with line wrapping in Emacs
## ("fill-paragraph" command).
# Ordinary non-doc comment.
'data' : AnyValue,

#" A hash mark and a quotation mark on each line looks funny, and
#" it doesn't work well with line wrapping in Emacs.
'data' : AnyValue,

These styles (repeated on each line) work well with line wrapping in Emacs:

##  #>  #|  #-  #%  #!  #*

These styles do not work well with line wrapping in Emacs:

#"  #'  #:  #)  #.  #/  #@  #$  #^  #=  #+  #_  #~

The style of doc comment indicator used could be a runtime, global and/or per-module setting. That may add more complexity than it's worth though.

1.5.1.1   Recommendation

I recommend adopting "#*" on every line:

# This is an ordinary non-doc comment.

#* This is a documentation comment, with an asterisk after the
#* hash marks on every line.
'data' : AnyValue,

I initially recommended adopting double-hash-marks:

# This is an ordinary non-doc comment.

## This is a documentation comment, with double-hash-marks on
## every line.
'data' : AnyValue,

But Janet Swisher rightly pointed out that this could collide with ordinary comments that are then block-commented. This applies to double-hash-marks on the first line only as well. So they're out.

On the other hand, the JavaDoc-comment style ("##" on the first line only, "#" after that) is used in Fredrik Lundh's PythonDoc. It may be worthwhile to conform to this syntax, reinforcing it as a standard. PythonDoc does not support terse doc comments (text after "##" on the first line).

1.5.1.2   Update

Enthought's Traits system has switched to a metaclass base, and traits are now defined via ordinary attributes. Therefore doc comments are no longer absolutely necessary; attribute docstrings will suffice. Doc comments may still be desirable though, since they allow documentation to precede the thing being documented.

1.5.2   Docstring Density & Whitespace Minimization

One problem with extensively documented classes & functions, is that there is a lot of screen space wasted on whitespace. Here's some current Enthought code (from lib/cp/fluids/gassmann.py):

def max_gas(temperature, pressure, api, specific_gravity=.56):
    """
    Computes the maximum dissolved gas in oil using Batzle and
    Wang (1992).

    Parameters
    ----------
    temperature : sequence
        Temperature in degrees Celsius
    pressure : sequence
        Pressure in MPa
    api : sequence
        Stock tank oil API
    specific_gravity : sequence
        Specific gravity of gas at STP, default is .56

    Returns
    -------
    max_gor : sequence
        Maximum dissolved gas in liters/liter

    Description
    -----------
    This estimate is based on equations given by Mavko, Mukerji,
    and Dvorkin, (1998, pp. 218-219, or 2003, p. 236) obtained
    originally from Batzle and Wang (1992).
    """
    code...

The docstring is 24 lines long.

Rather than using subsections, field lists (which exist now) can save 6 lines:

def max_gas(temperature, pressure, api, specific_gravity=.56):
    """
    Computes the maximum dissolved gas in oil using Batzle and
    Wang (1992).

    :Parameters:
        temperature : sequence
            Temperature in degrees Celsius
        pressure : sequence
            Pressure in MPa
        api : sequence
            Stock tank oil API
        specific_gravity : sequence
            Specific gravity of gas at STP, default is .56
    :Returns:
        max_gor : sequence
            Maximum dissolved gas in liters/liter
    :Description: This estimate is based on equations given by
        Mavko, Mukerji, and Dvorkin, (1998, pp. 218-219, or 2003,
        p. 236) obtained originally from Batzle and Wang (1992).
    """
    code...

As with the "Description" field above, field bodies may begin on the same line as the field name, which also saves space.

The output for field lists is typically a table structure. For example:

Parameters:
temperature : sequence

Temperature in degrees Celsius

pressure : sequence

Pressure in MPa

api : sequence

Stock tank oil API

specific_gravity : sequence

Specific gravity of gas at STP, default is .56
Returns:
max_gor : sequence

Maximum dissolved gas in liters/liter
Description:

This estimate is based on equations given by Mavko, Mukerji, and Dvorkin, (1998, pp. 218-219, or 2003, p. 236) obtained originally from Batzle and Wang (1992).

But the definition lists describing the parameters and return values are still wasteful of space. There are a lot of half-filled lines.

Definition lists are currently defined as:

term : classifier
    definition

Where the classifier part is optional. Ideas for improvements:

  1. We could allow multiple classifiers:

    term : classifier one : two : three ...
    definition

  2. We could allow the definition on the same line as the term, using some embedded/inline markup:

    • "--" could be used, but only in limited and well-known contexts:

      term -- definition

      This is the syntax used by StructuredText (one of reStructuredText's predecessors). It was not adopted for reStructuredText because it is ambiguous -- people often use "--" in their text, as I just did. But given a constrained context, the ambiguity would be acceptable (or would it?). That context would be: in docstrings, within a field list, perhaps only with certain well-defined field names (parameters, returns).

    • The "constrained context" above isn't really enough to make the ambiguity acceptable. Instead, a slightly more verbose but far less ambiguous syntax is possible:

      term === definition

      This syntax has advantages. Equals signs lend themselves to the connotation of "definition". And whereas one or two equals signs are commonly used in program code, three equals signs in a row have no conflicting meanings that I know of. (Update: there are uses out there.)

    The problem with this approach is that using inline markup for structure is inherently ambiguous in reStructuredText. For example, writing about definition lists would be difficult:

    ``term === definition`` is an example of a compact definition list item

    The parser checks for structural markup before it does inline markup processing. But the "===" should be protected by its inline literal context.

  3. We could allow the definition on the same line as the term, using structural markup. A variation on bullet lists would work well:

    : term :: definition
: another term :: and a definition that
  wraps across lines

    Some ambiguity remains:

    : term ``containing :: double colons`` :: definition

    But the likelihood of such cases is negligible, and they can be covered in the documentation.

    Other possibilities for the definition delimiter include:

    : term : classifier -- definition
: term : classifier --- definition
: term : classifier : : definition
: term : classifier === definition

The third idea currently has the best chance of being adopted and implemented.

1.5.2.1   Recommendation

Combining these ideas, the function definition becomes:

def max_gas(temperature, pressure, api, specific_gravity=.56):
    """
    Computes the maximum dissolved gas in oil using Batzle and
    Wang (1992).

    :Parameters:
        : temperature : sequence :: Temperature in degrees Celsius
        : pressure : sequence :: Pressure in MPa
        : api : sequence :: Stock tank oil API
        : specific_gravity : sequence :: Specific gravity of gas at
          STP, default is .56
    :Returns:
        : max_gor : sequence :: Maximum dissolved gas in liters/liter
    :Description: This estimate is based on equations given by
        Mavko, Mukerji, and Dvorkin, (1998, pp. 218-219, or 2003,
        p. 236) obtained originally from Batzle and Wang (1992).
    """
    code...

The docstring is reduced to 14 lines, from the original 24. For longer docstrings with many parameters and return values, the difference would be more significant.