[BioPython] Is there any more detailed documentation to BioPython?

Brad Chapman chapmanb at uga.edu
Wed Mar 17 20:39:43 EST 2004


Hi Denny;

> 	I use BioPython about one year and it is really 
> a good programming language. But I think the ONLY drawback 
> is that BioPython has simple or poor documentation.

Thanks for the comments. Definitely I feel the same as you --
documentation is always something where we are lacking. A couple of
ways in which I am thinking about trying to improve things are:

* Getting a better representation of the documentation that is in
the modules. Many of the Biopython docstrings are very useful, but
the automatic extraction tool I've been using (Happydoc) hasn't
always made me happy. Just last week I was pointed to epydoc:

http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/

which I am hearing is much better. So we may be improving like that.

* Modularizing the Biopython Tutorial documentation into smaller
"cook-book" like sections. Honestly, the Tutorial is getting too big
and unwieldy to maintain, and I'm planning on working to section it
up into smaller parts that describe individual sections. We have
already started doing this with the installation instructions and
BioSQL, and recently I've written a couple other smaller bits.

The second part -- writing small documentation on doing something
with Biopython -- is something we can always use help with. We are
definitely looking for Biopython users to contribute here, and I do
hope that with an emphasis on writing just a small document that
describes something we can get more people to contribute on this
front.

Thanks for the feedback.
Brad


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