Document Your Sources

To add a documentation string to your Python modules and functions, enclose the documentation in """triple-quotes"""

I have heard that this is the recommended way to document your code and you should be doing this anyway.

Example:

def get_dir(treeviewcolumn, cell_renderer, model, iter):
    """Callback to set text property to match treemodel data.
    
    The text may be different or contain extra style information
    but here we are setting it to be the same."""
    val = model.get_value(iter, 0)
    cell_renderer.set_property('text', str(val))
    return

Checkout

svn checkout https://greenhorn.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/greenhorn

Browse Documentation

./greenhorn.py

Displays interactive help for regular Python commands (also known as builtins).

./greenhorn.py gtk

Displays interactive help for the 'gtk' module.

Search

To search for an item, type part of its name in the search box and press Enter.

Greenhorn Interactive

To use greenhorn's gdir() command interactively:

$ PYTHONSTARTUP=imports python

Python 2.7 (r27:82500, Sep 16 2010, 18:02:00) 
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
Type "gdir('module')" for help on 'module'.
>>>
>>>gdir('os')

There is a limitation with Python that you can not view __builtins__ in interactive mode. The workaround is to execute greenhorn from the shell.

execfile('greenhorn.py')

Inspect Source Code

This program evaluates and displays the output from the dir() command and outputs each functions .doc string when tree items are clicked on. If local modules are imported, a source tab will appear, allowing you to browse source code on that item. For example:

./greenhorn.py self

If you use Greenhorn to inspect itself and search for any of the modules Greenhorn exports, such as entry_changed_cb, a source code tab will appear as a child. (Click the arrow and double-click on 'source' to see the listing.)

Source code browsing also works on other modules that have source code available. The Python 'inspect' module is one of them.

./greenhorn.py inspect

This is very handy if you often use bleeding-edge modules for which the documentation changes rapidly or otherwise sucks.