DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS? This directory contains the code to build the matplotlib web page, which can be found at http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net. In other words, unless you want to edit the web page docs, there is not much need to build them yourself since they are available online. If all you want is the pydoc documentation, this is online at http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/matlab_commands.html and http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/classdocs.html If you really want to build the html docs yourself, you will need to have all backends working. OK, YOU'RE STILL HERE? The html for the matplotlib web site is generated using yaptu, a simple (71 lines of code!) but powerful templating engine http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52305 All of the web pages are templates, eg, index.html.template in which I combine arbitrary python data structures with yaptu templating. process_docs.py is a script to generate the pydocs for the class library, and munge the generated output into a format suitable for inclusion into the web page. convert.py is the workhorse that runs all the templates and generates the html with the appropriate headers and footers. screenshots/makeshots.py is a script that creates all the screenshots that can be generated dyamically (some cannot be because, for example, they are screenshots of figure windows with the navigation toolbar). Caution, the mri and pcolor screenshots currently take a long time to generate because the are high resolution. Best run on a fast computer! BUILDING THE DOCS IN A NUTSHELL So in a nutshell, here is what you need to do to generate the docs. 0) Build the matplotlib html class documentation with Make htmldocs 1) Make sure the CVS matplotlib tree is in your PYTHONPATH and > cd htdocs 2) > python process_docs.py 3) > python convert.py 4) > cd screenshots 5) > python makeshots.py # this could take a while for pcolor and mri 6) Point your browser at file:///your/dev/matplotlb/htdocs/index.html You can also run # in the matplotlib dev root (doesn't rebuild screenshots) > make htmldocs