Zpydoc

Zope and Plone-aware pydoc

Project Description

Zpydoc is our initiative to apply the standard documentation formalisms utilised within Python to Zope - itself a Python application. The scope of the project is as follows:

• Incorporate the pydoc -p HTTP server functionality into Zope - already an HTTP-aware server
• Use the Zope security model to select/restrict what may be documented
• Provide a customisable presentation layer
• Provide Zope aware hooks into the Python inspector mechanism to better document Zope classes.

Each of these objectives has been achieved. In addition to the pydoc level of documentation, this product also documents Zope permissions on classes and constructors, and it documents interface classes. Documentation formatting is via (re)structured text utilising docutils or Zope Structured Text, depending upon your Zope installation.

To use Zpydoc, simply install the download and create Zpydoc instance(s) whereever you wish. Each instance must then have at least one renderer created (via the Renderers tab), then you simply create ZpyDocumentable's for each Python path directory you wish to document. Within each ZpyDocumentable, you must assign role permissions via the File Permission tab to make the module available. That's it!

To change the look and feel of your documentation, simply edit the Zope Page Templates in your renderer. You have available for use, all of the information in the PythonInfo or ZopeInfo instance of the documented module. Because writing interpreter inspection routines really requires file-level permissions, you should look to the renderers and the inspectors source directories to create specialist renderers.