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RyanMorillo is working on adding the help function from CPython to work in Jython as a Google Summer of Code project mentored by CharlieGroves. In addition to exposing help for Python code like CPython, we're going to try to add the ability to show help for Java code from their javadocs.

RyanMorillo is working on adding the help function from CPython to work in Jython as a Google Summer of Code project mentored by CharlieGroves. In addition to exposing help for Python code like CPython, we're going to try to add the ability to show help for Java code from their javadocs.

Note: This started as a weblog post from Brian Zimmer (His weblog disappeared a long time ago, but I dug it up again through the magic of the [http://www.archive.org/web/web.php wayback machine].

One of the best features of Python IMHO is the help() function. It’s the first place I turn if I need help before I open a web browser and read the docs.

I think it would be cool if we could do this:

>>> from java.lang import String
>>> help(String)

and see the full Javadoc documentation in help format.

A good project would be to create a system that could turn Javadoc comments into a format that the Jython help system could consume (perhaps with a Doclet or xdoclet?) -- this will become especially nice for Sun's newly GPL'ed version) in the case of classes not already exposed with the special __doc string mechanism available in Jython already.

This could be facilitated with an xdoclet like framework which when ran over a source file would produce something Jython could use at runtime.

Of course, help() is not currently working at all in Jython -- so the first step would be to figure out why this is and fix it. Also, we need a strategy for getting the help documentation from CPython into our new style classes.

HelpSystem (last edited 2014-05-09 00:02:30 by AdamBurke)