Dead documentation links / Keep online doc updated

The links at http://starship.python.net/crew/mhammond/win32/ in the section

"""
There is also some (old) documentation you may like to check out. For some details on Pythonwin (including embedding it in your own MFC application and some MFC concepts) see http://www.python.org/windows/pythonwin/. For some overviews of the Win32 API as exposed to Python, see http://www.python.org/windows/win32/
"""

are dead.

Searching for "win32" at python.org brings up http://www.python.org/ftp/python/win32/ which just says

"""
Do yourself a favor and pick up a newer Python download for Windows!

Go to http://www.python.org/download/ for the latest versions.
"""

Not very helpfull too.

Is there win32 API doc online somewhere?

Reported by: struppimoppi

Original Ticket: "pywin32/bugs/394":https://sourceforge.net/p/pywin32/bugs/394

[jedie]

Hm. Where can i find the current documentation?

http://timgolden.me.uk/pywin32-docs/ is out dated

IMHO: Add a link in README ;)

[mhammond]

Docs are included in the package. There are no web-hosted docs (although I'd be happy to accept a PR which works out how to publish them on github)

[jedie]

Docs are included in the package

I looked for it and found https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32/tree/master/AutoDuck Unfortunately this is not directly readable :( ... I have no idea to "publish" this on github ;)

There are different ways on Github:

• You can use the wiki (only a few used it): https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32/wiki
• It displays markdown creole markup files directly (Just like the README)
• Or you can use GitHub Pages and Jekyll: https://help.github.com/articles/about-github-pages-and-jekyll/

[tjguk]

Since mine were the docs referenced earlier... some years ago I basically wrote some code to pull apart the HTML generated as part of the .chm process and tweaked it enough to upload it. As @jedie points out it's no longer up to date (although the docs haven't changed an enormous amount in the intervening years so it's still of some value).

I'll look to see if I still have that code somewhere, but frankly I'm not sure I do. Even if I do, that still leaves the question of how to get the docs onto GH pages, but if nothing else I can always refresh and upload them where they are now.

[jedie]

IMHO it's a good idea to create a docs direcotry in the git repo root and add markdown or ReSt files there... Or setup the full stack with sphinx and use readthedocs.org

[mhammond]

Docs are included in the package

I looked for it and found https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32/tree/master/AutoDuck

Sorry, I meant that the docs are built and included in the installation package as a .chm file.

I have no idea to "publish" this on github ;)

Yeah, we'd need the output of that build process push the built docs somewhere. I'm happy to help where I can, but I'm unable to do that work.

Tim: thanks! If you have useful stuff there, let me know if you have stuff we should land in-tree and, even if ugly, in the .chm file - there are a few "raw" .html files already there. It's best not lost, even if today it's not as widely available as it should be (ie, just like the rest of the "docs" :)

[mhammond]

IMHO it's a good idea to create a docs direcotry in the git repo root and add markdown or ReSt files there... Or setup the full stack with sphinx and use readthedocs.org

That sounds like a great idea. PRs welcome (although note that the docs are already in the marked-up source code and the build process creates the .html)

[tjguk]

Well I've found the code I used:

https://gist.github.com/tjguk/e485ceca53a8f279d691badf84787ed7

I'll try to regenerate against the current docs and then re-publish where it was. At least that freshens up what people can see now.

[tjguk]

@mhammond Just noticed that you'd added a comment in my direction. So the docs which I'm talking about here are the ones mentioned above by @jedie at http://timgolden.me.uk/pywin32-docs/ . They're basically an unpacking of the chm into an online HTML format. They're generated by the (embarrassingly old) code I posted above and I'm just reworking slightly to pick the .chm and the pywin32.version.txt info up dynamically.

[tjguk]

For info, I've now updated the copy of the docs at http://timgolden.me.uk/pywin32-docs/index.html from the latest pip-installable version.

The code (and the docs) are now hosted at https://github.com/tjguk/pywin32-docs