Read Me

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).  


BUILDING THE DOCS IN A NUTSHELL

    All you need to do to build the html documentation is 'make
    htmldocs'.  This runs process_docs.py and convert.py for you.  I
    decoupled running the screenshot script from building the docs
    because typically I need to rebuild the docs more often than I
    need to rebuild the screenshots.  To build the shots do

      > cd screenshots

      > python makeshots.py 

     
    After you have done the point your browser at
    file:///your/dev/matplotlb/htdocs/index.html