1 Introduction

     2 ============

     3 

     4 Python's documentation has long been considered to be good for a free

     5 programming language.  There are a number of reasons for this, the most

     6 important being the early commitment of Python's creator, Guido van Rossum, to

     7 providing documentation on the language and its libraries, and the continuing

     8 involvement of the user community in providing assistance for creating and

     9 maintaining documentation.

    10 

    11 The involvement of the community takes many forms, from authoring to bug reports

    12 to just plain complaining when the documentation could be more complete or

    13 easier to use.

    14 

    15 This document is aimed at authors and potential authors of documentation for

    16 Python.  More specifically, it is for people contributing to the standard

    17 documentation and developing additional documents using the same tools as the

    18 standard documents.  This guide will be less useful for authors using the Python

    19 documentation tools for topics other than Python, and less useful still for

    20 authors not using the tools at all.

    21 

    22 If your interest is in contributing to the Python documentation, but you don't

    23 have the time or inclination to learn reStructuredText and the markup structures

    24 documented here, there's a welcoming place for you among the Python contributors

    25 as well.  Any time you feel that you can clarify existing documentation or

    26 provide documentation that's missing, the existing documentation team will

    27 gladly work with you to integrate your text, dealing with the markup for you.

    28 Please don't let the material in this document stand between the documentation

    29 and your desire to help out!