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<section id="mep10-docstring-consistency">
<h1>MEP10: Docstring consistency<a class="headerlink" href="#mep10-docstring-consistency" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h1>
<nav class="contents local" id="contents">
<ul class="simple">
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#status" id="id2">Status</a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#branches-and-pull-requests" id="id3">Branches and Pull requests</a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#abstract" id="id4">Abstract</a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#detailed-description" id="id5">Detailed description</a></p>
<ul>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#numpy-docstring-format" id="id6">Numpy docstring format</a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#cross-references" id="id7">Cross references</a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#overriding-signatures" id="id8">Overriding signatures</a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#linking-rather-than-duplicating" id="id9">Linking rather than duplicating</a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#autosummary-extension" id="id10">autosummary extension</a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#examples-linking-to-relevant-documentation" id="id11">Examples linking to relevant documentation</a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#documentation-using-help-vs-a-browser" id="id12">Documentation using help() vs. a browser</a></p></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#implementation" id="id13">Implementation</a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#backward-compatibility" id="id14">Backward compatibility</a></p></li>
<li><p><a class="reference internal" href="#alternatives" id="id15">Alternatives</a></p></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<section id="status">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id2" role="doc-backlink">Status</a><a class="headerlink" href="#status" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h2>
<p><strong>Progress</strong></p>
<p>This is still an on-going effort</p>
</section>
<section id="branches-and-pull-requests">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id3" role="doc-backlink">Branches and Pull requests</a><a class="headerlink" href="#branches-and-pull-requests" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h2>
</section>
<section id="abstract">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id4" role="doc-backlink">Abstract</a><a class="headerlink" href="#abstract" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h2>
<p>matplotlib has a great deal of inconsistency between docstrings. This
not only makes the docs harder to read, but it is harder on
contributors, because they don't know which specifications to follow.
There should be a clear docstring convention that is followed
consistently.</p>
<p>The organization of the API documentation is difficult to follow.
Some pages, such as pyplot and axes, are enormous and hard to browse.
There should instead be short summary tables that link to detailed
documentation. In addition, some of the docstrings themselves are
quite long and contain redundant information.</p>
<p>Building the documentation takes a long time and uses a <code class="file docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">make.py</span></code>
script rather than a Makefile.</p>
</section>
<section id="detailed-description">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id5" role="doc-backlink">Detailed description</a><a class="headerlink" href="#detailed-description" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h2>
<p>There are number of new tools and conventions available since
matplotlib started using Sphinx that make life easier. The following
is a list of proposed changes to docstrings, most of which involve
these new features.</p>
<section id="numpy-docstring-format">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id6" role="doc-backlink">Numpy docstring format</a><a class="headerlink" href="#numpy-docstring-format" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h3>
<p><a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/numpy/numpy/blob/master/doc/HOWTO_DOCUMENT.rst.txt">Numpy docstring format</a>:
This format divides the docstring into clear sections, each having
different parsing rules that make the docstring easy to read both as
raw text and as HTML. We could consider alternatives, or invent our
own, but this is a strong choice, as it's well used and understood in
the Numpy/Scipy community.</p>
</section>
<section id="cross-references">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id7" role="doc-backlink">Cross references</a><a class="headerlink" href="#cross-references" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h3>
<p>Most of the docstrings in matplotlib use explicit "roles" when linking
to other items, for example: <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">:func:`myfunction`</span></code>. As of Sphinx
0.4, there is a "default_role" that can be set to "obj", which will
polymorphically link to a Python object of any type. This allows one
to write <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">`myfunction`</span></code> instead. This makes docstrings much easier
to read and edit as raw text. Additionally, Sphinx allows for setting
a current module, so links like <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">`~matplotlib.axes.Axes.set_xlim`</span></code>
could be written as <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">`~axes.Axes.set_xlim`</span></code>.</p>
</section>
<section id="overriding-signatures">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id8" role="doc-backlink">Overriding signatures</a><a class="headerlink" href="#overriding-signatures" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h3>
<p>Many methods in matplotlib use the <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">*args</span></code> and <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">**kwargs</span></code> syntax
to dynamically handle the keyword arguments that are accepted by the
function, or to delegate on to another function. This, however, is
often not useful as a signature in the documentation. For this
reason, many matplotlib methods include something like:</p>
<div class="highlight-default notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="k">def</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nf">annotate</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">self</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="o">*</span><span class="n">args</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="o">**</span><span class="n">kwargs</span><span class="p">):</span>
<span class="w"> </span><span class="sd">"""</span>
<span class="sd"> Create an annotation: a piece of text referring to a data</span>
<span class="sd"> point.</span>
<span class="sd"> Call signature::</span>
<span class="sd"> annotate(s, xy, xytext=None, xycoords='data',</span>
<span class="sd"> textcoords='data', arrowprops=None, **kwargs)</span>
<span class="sd"> """</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>This can't be parsed by Sphinx, and is rather verbose in raw text. As
of Sphinx 1.1, if the <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">autodoc_docstring_signature</span></code> config value is
set to True, Sphinx will extract a replacement signature from the
first line of the docstring, allowing this:</p>
<div class="highlight-default notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="k">def</span><span class="w"> </span><span class="nf">annotate</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="bp">self</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="o">*</span><span class="n">args</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="o">**</span><span class="n">kwargs</span><span class="p">):</span>
<span class="w"> </span><span class="sd">"""</span>
<span class="sd"> annotate(s, xy, xytext=None, xycoords='data',</span>
<span class="sd"> textcoords='data', arrowprops=None, **kwargs)</span>
<span class="sd"> Create an annotation: a piece of text referring to a data</span>
<span class="sd"> point.</span>
<span class="sd"> """</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>The explicit signature will replace the actual Python one in the
generated documentation.</p>
</section>
<section id="linking-rather-than-duplicating">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id9" role="doc-backlink">Linking rather than duplicating</a><a class="headerlink" href="#linking-rather-than-duplicating" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h3>
<p>Many of the docstrings include long lists of accepted keywords by
interpolating things into the docstring at load time. This makes the
docstrings very long. Also, since these tables are the same across
many docstrings, it inserts a lot of redundant information in the docs
-- particularly a problem in the printed version.</p>
<p>These tables should be moved to docstrings on functions whose only
purpose is for help. The docstrings that refer to these tables should
link to them, rather than including them verbatim.</p>
</section>
<section id="autosummary-extension">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id10" role="doc-backlink">autosummary extension</a><a class="headerlink" href="#autosummary-extension" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h3>
<p>The Sphinx autosummary extension should be used to generate summary
tables, that link to separate pages of documentation. Some classes
that have many methods (e.g. <a class="reference internal" href="../../api/_as_gen/matplotlib.axes.Axes.html#matplotlib.axes.Axes" title="matplotlib.axes.Axes"><code class="xref py py-obj docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Axes</span></code></a>) should be documented with
one method per page, whereas smaller classes should have all of their
methods together.</p>
</section>
<section id="examples-linking-to-relevant-documentation">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id11" role="doc-backlink">Examples linking to relevant documentation</a><a class="headerlink" href="#examples-linking-to-relevant-documentation" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h3>
<p>The examples, while helpful at illustrating how to use a feature, do
not link back to the relevant docstrings. This could be addressed by
adding module-level docstrings to the examples, and then including
that docstring in the parsed content on the example page. These
docstrings could easily include references to any other part of the
documentation.</p>
</section>
<section id="documentation-using-help-vs-a-browser">
<h3><a class="toc-backref" href="#id12" role="doc-backlink">Documentation using help() vs. a browser</a><a class="headerlink" href="#documentation-using-help-vs-a-browser" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h3>
<p>Using Sphinx markup in the source allows for good-looking docs in your
browser, but the markup also makes the raw text returned using help()
look terrible. One of the aims of improving the docstrings should be
to make both methods of accessing the docs look good.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section id="implementation">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id13" role="doc-backlink">Implementation</a><a class="headerlink" href="#implementation" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h2>
<ol class="arabic simple">
<li><p>The numpydoc extensions should be turned on for matplotlib. There
is an important question as to whether these should be included in
the matplotlib source tree, or used as a dependency. Installing
Numpy is not sufficient to get the numpydoc extensions -- it's a
separate install procedure. In any case, to the extent that they
require customization for our needs, we should endeavor to submit
those changes upstream and not fork them.</p></li>
<li><p>Manually go through all of the docstrings and update them to the
new format and conventions. Updating the cross references (from
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">`:func:`myfunc`</span></code> to <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">`func`</span></code>) may be able to be
semi-automated. This is a lot of busy work, and perhaps this labor
should be divided on a per-module basis so no single developer is
over-burdened by it.</p></li>
<li><p>Reorganize the API docs using autosummary and <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">sphinx-autogen</span></code>.
This should hopefully have minimal impact on the narrative
documentation.</p></li>
<li><p>Modify the example page generator (<code class="file docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">gen_rst.py</span></code>) so that it
extracts the module docstring from the example and includes it in a
non-literal part of the example page.</p></li>
<li><p>Use <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">sphinx-quickstart</span></code> to generate a new-style Sphinx Makefile.
The following features in the current <code class="file docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">make.py</span></code> will have to be
addressed in some other way:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><p>Copying of some static content</p></li>
<li><p>Specifying a "small" build (only low-resolution PNG files for examples)</p></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<p>Steps 1, 2, and 3 are interdependent. 4 and 5 may be done
independently, though 5 has some dependency on 3.</p>
</section>
<section id="backward-compatibility">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id14" role="doc-backlink">Backward compatibility</a><a class="headerlink" href="#backward-compatibility" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h2>
<p>As this mainly involves docstrings, there should be minimal impact on
backward compatibility.</p>
</section>
<section id="alternatives">
<h2><a class="toc-backref" href="#id15" role="doc-backlink">Alternatives</a><a class="headerlink" href="#alternatives" title="Link to this heading">#</a></h2>
<p>None yet discussed.</p>
</section>
</section>
</article>
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