Many math books have an index or glossary of symbols connecting the symbols
used in the text with their meaning in that text. I have often found these
useful.
I believe that people learning and using Python would similarly benefit
from an index to the non-alphabetic symbols (and multi-symbol syntactic
units) used in Python code.
I am willing to do perhaps half the work needed to produce such in time for
the 2.5 release. In particular, I am willing to write a plain text file
listing symbols (in ascii sort order) and section numbers, in an agreed-on
format, if the idea is approved and someone else agrees to convert section
numbers to page links and do the necessary latex/html formatting (with a
Python script?).
The main formatting decision is between the two formats already used for
identifiers versus topics. For example, for the multiple meanings of '()'
(which is one syntactic unit):
() (calls) 5.3.4
() (expressions) 5.2.3
() (tuple literals) 5.2.3
with each line a link -- see '__dict__' for an example -- or
()
calls 5.3.4
expressions 5.2.3
tuple 5.2.3
with each subline a link -- see arithmetic for an example.
[I just realized that some links need to be within-page rather than to the
top of the page and that I can cut and paste additional info if I find the
appropriate regular index entry, such as
http://docs.python.org/ref/parenthesized.html#l2h-342 for 5.2.3. But I
will work this sort of thing out with whoever formats.]
Terry Jan Reedy
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