daria,

Folks, if you could suggest improvements to the documentation, what would it be? Improved ToC? More examples? Different structure?

plaimbock,
@plaimbock@fosstodon.org avatar

@daria A pdf and epub of The Python Tutorial would be nice. https://docs.python.org/3.11/tutorial/index.html

hugovk,
@hugovk@mastodon.social avatar

@plaimbock @daria

Good news! These already exist!

At the top left of https://docs.python.org/3/ is "Download these documents" taking you to https://docs.python.org/3/download.html

There's a zip of PDFs of each section, including one for the tutorial, and an epub of the whole thing.

plaimbock,
@plaimbock@fosstodon.org avatar

@hugovk @daria Thanks Hugo! I totally missed that link yesterday so please excuse the PEBKAC 😋️

hugovk,
@hugovk@mastodon.social avatar

@plaimbock @daria No problem, these things aren't always obvious :)

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@daria Simply better explanations.

I only ever use the to look up specific facts, like constants or string format codes. If I need to understand something I look for a tutorial elsewhere.

The docs, like a lot of technical articles, value accuracy and precision over clarity and understanding.

First make me understand the mental model. Then tweak the specifics. Don't start with the details.

diazona,
@diazona@techhub.social avatar

@davidr @daria This brings to mind something I often think about: documentation needs to be different things for different audiences, and I think it's often better to keep those different things separate. Case in point, introductory documentation (like tutorials) vs reference documentation (like constants and string format codes and other API listings). Right now most of the Python standard library documentation is closer to the reference end of the spectrum, but parts of it try to have a bit of a tutorial aspect as well, which I think is useful in small doses but it'd be easy to go overboard.

So my suggestion would be, the first thing to figure out is, who is the documentation for? (Or, is it going to have different parts for different audiences?) IMO it's difficult/impossible to identify what changes would be improvements until that is clear.

davidr,
@davidr@hachyderm.io avatar

@diazona @daria Yes, 100% agree. In fact, I'm not sure I'd change the python docs--references need to exist.

I've already made the change on my end. When I have a use-case-based question, I look for a stack overflow post.

But if the question is "how can docs be better" maybe add one of the other three types: https://www.writethedocs.org/videos/eu/2017/the-four-kinds-of-documentation-and-why-you-need-to-understand-what-they-are-daniele-procida/

LauraLangdon,
@LauraLangdon@hachyderm.io avatar

@davidr @diazona @daria In fact the Django docs are a canonical example of this paradigm! https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/

The current Python documentation is strictly reference, and those reference pages should definitely not go anywhere. But it would be so lovely to add some tutorials and guides.

I would love to contribute to such a project!

daria,

A wild @encukou appeared on my path, and pointed me to the Python Documentation Community https://docs-community.readthedocs.io/en/latest/community/contributing.html#get-connected which I wasn't aware of. Looking at the docs-community repo some of the issues from this thread have been tracked for a while now https://github.com/python/docs-community/issues

@LauraLangdon @davidr @diazona @planetscape @mikolaj

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