Proposal: Sanitize HelpSys & API Reference, was Re: [Zope-dev] Reasons for the current API reference docs implementation?

[Chris McDonough]

On Sun, 2004-04-04 at 17:50, Paul Winkler wrote:
> I've posted my proposal:
> http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/SanitizeHelpSysAndAPIReference
> 
> """
> Motivation
> 
> The current Help system in Zope 2 is sometimes jokingly referred to as 
> the "hurt^H^H^H^Hhelp" system. The online API reference in the Zope Book, 
> which AFAICT is extracted from the help system, contains a number of 
> disparaging and disappointed comments from users. Problems include:
> 
>     * incomplete (methods and entire classes are missing)
>     * lack of useful examples
>     * doesn't always match the source code (e.g. ObjectManagerItem does 
>       not really exist)
>     * online version is hard to navigate
>     * synchronizing the online BackTalk version with the help system is 
>       a laborious manual process
> """

FWIW, the old Zope Book sourceforge project (where?) had some code to
generate the API reference chapter from the helpsys.  I didn't use it
because the API reference was "stepchilded" during the Zope Book
rewrite, but it could be useful somehow.

- C