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 (also included in this dir so you don't need to install it) 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 All you need to do to build the html documentation edit make.py to poiint to your matplotlib src tree, and then run 'python make.py'. This runs makeshots.py, process_docs.py and convert.py for you. A tar file site.tar.gz is created, which I ship off to the sf website.