RE: feature request #1055954: respect newlines in description

-----Message d'origine-----
> De : [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]De la part de Greg Ward
> Envoye : jeudi 10 mars 2005 01:50
> A : [email protected]
> Objet : Re: [optik] feature request #1055954: respect newlines in
> description
>
>
> On 09 March 2005, Tomi Mickelsson said:
> > In short, I would like to control the linefeeds in the description
field.
> > I do not like the way everything in the description is jammed into a
> > single paragraph.
> [...]
> > To achieve this formatting, I have the following kludge in my code:
> > ---
> > import new
> >
> > ....code omitted
> >
> > # use my own description formatter method
> > parser.format_description = new.instancemethod(lambda self,x :
> > self.description, parser, parser.__class__)
>
[...]

> A compelling argument would be if someone wanted multiple paragraphs in
> the description.  My proposed interface for that would be
>
>   parser = OptionParser(...,
>                         description=[paragraph1,
>                                      paragraph2,
>                                      ...,
>                                      paragraphN],
>                         ...)
>
> Passing a string X would be equivalent to passing the list [X].  Each
> paragraph would be wrapped individually, and then they would be printed
> *with a blank line between them*.

I think that passing the list [X] should be an extension, not the default
behavior. I prefer passing a string with newlines, I explain why:

For a real world program (not a simple script), I write programs'
documentation with MS Word ;-) and cut / copy the paragraphs in my Python
module. I usually insert those paragraphs in the beginning of the code in
order to give the description of the script as soon as possible. I can put
the description in the docstring of the module. Programmers that get my code
just have to read the docstring to understand the script. Knowing that, I
can extract optparse description from module's docstring (with a regexpr).
That way, it is simpler for me to handle a string than a list of strings. I
still haven't implemented that feature, but I'll do it soon.

> That's easy to implement, easy to explain, and easy to use.  Magic
> tricks to split a single string into paragraphs are a non-starter for
> me.  (Which is why textwrap.py resolutely refuses to consider its input
> string as anything other than a single paragraph.  There was talk at one
> point about adding a split-into-paragraphs function to textwrap.py, but
> I guess it never happened.)
>
> So: does anyone want this feature?  If so, I'll hijack Tomi's SF item
> and implement it.  If not -- never mind.

Yes I do, but implemented in passing a multi-lines' string.

------- Laurent.



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