Frequently Asked Questions

(Average question asking frequency: 0.03)

Q: Javadoc has too much caffeine; ReStructuredText is capitalized weirdly; and Epydoc just isn't cool enough. Will you add support for my favorite markup language xyz?

No, but you can! ...

Q: The HTML output looks ugly to me. How can I change it?

The CSS stylesheet can be used to modify the colors, fonts, etc. that are used by epydoc. If your objections have to do with the actual layout of the pages, then I'd be happy to hear your suggestions for improving it; but I'm fairly happy with the layout, and probably won't make changes unless I agree that they improve the appearance significantly.

Q: I'm documenting a large project. How can I make epydoc go faster?

Try the following options:

−−inheritance=listed In summary tables, show inherited objects as a short list.
−−no−private Don't create documentation for private objects
−−docformat=plaintext Format docstrings as plaintext, instead of epytext
(Docstrings will be rendered verbatim).

Q: Why does epydoc get confused when I include a backslash in a docstring?

A Python docstring is a string, and is interpreted like any other string. In particular, Python interprets "\n" as a newline, "\t" as a tab, etc. If you want to include backslashes in your docstring (e.g. because you want to talk about regular expressions or newline characters), you should use a raw string. E.g.:

>>> f(x):
...     r"""
...     Return true if x matches the regexp '\w+\s*\w+'.
...     """
    

Q: I've found a bug in epydoc! Where should I report it?

Use the Sourceforge bug tracker to report bugs. If you want to hear back when I fix it, be sure to either log in to Sourceforge, or include your email address in the bug report.

Q: I'd like to help! What can I do?

If there are any features that you want to add to Epydoc, I'd be happy to accept patches. Patches should be submitted with the Sourceforge patch tracker (be sure to describe what your patch does!). If you plan to make several changes, I could also add you as a developer on Sourceforge. Email me if you're interested.

For a list of additions that I'd like to make to Epydoc, see the todo list in the Epydoc reference documentation.

Q: New fields?

Q: Change latex output?

Q: relate to other projects? - why dictionary - why uids - why parsing

Q: devel stuff?

Q: latex dies?

Q: exclude something?

Q:

Last modified: Fri Jul 25 02:40:12 XXX 2003