[Biopython-dev] Tutorial & Cookbook

[Peter]

David wrote:
>> For me as a n00b the most useful resource by far has been the cookbook -
>> seeing some working scripts that I could change to suit my ends has
>> helped me get to the point that I can write much more generalised code
>> for my project 'from scratch'. ...

When you said "cookbook", did you mean the Biopython Tutorial & Cookbook?
http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial.html
http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial.pdf

There are a couple of other documents under the "Cookbook" folder here:
http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/cookbook/Restriction.html
http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/cookbook/biopdb_faq.pdf

I have been wondering if the "Biopython Tutorial & Cookbook" should be
separated now - it is getting a bit long (which in some ways is a good
thing!).  Maybe we should re-title it as just the "Biopython
Tutorial".  Some bits of the current "Cookbook chapter" might be moved
into the main body of the tutorial (e.g. the alignment stuff), but
having the cookbook entries separate might be a good idea.

For a separate "Cookbook", we could again use LaTeX for another
HTML/PDF document (or set of documents) but perhaps just a series of
pages on the wiki would be more accessible - and much easier for
people to contribute to?  We'd need to organize things (e.g. a
cookbook category on the wiki) to make sure everything is still
accessible.  As a bonus, it would give us more hits on Google - which
is probably a good thing.

On the other hand, it would be very good if all our cookbook use cases
could be rolled into the unit test framework - which wouldn't be so
easy if they live on the wiki.  Something based on doctests might
work...

Peter