State that this doc describes generic, "core" MicroPython functionality,
any particular port may diverge in both directions, by both omitting
some functionality, and adding more, both cases described outside the
generic documentation.
Describe that the only portable way to deal with addresses is by using
getaddrinfo(). Describe that some ports may support tuple addresses using
"socket" module (vs "usocket" of native MicroPython).
This clarifies return values and the handling of invalid (e.g. newline)
characters.
Encoding conforms to RFC 3548, but decoding does not, as it ignores invalid
characters in base64 input. Instead, it conforms to MIME handling of base64
(RFC 2045).
Note that CPython doesn't document handling of invalid characters in
a2b_base64() docs:
https://docs.python.org/3/library/binascii.html#binascii.a2b_base64 , so
we specify it more explicitly than it, based on CPython's actual behavior
(with which MicroPython now compliant).
This makes top-level ToC of the pyboard docs consistent with other ports
(consisting of 3 chapters: QuickRef, General Info, and Tutorial).
Also, some other minor tweaks applied, like local ToC for General Info and
headings mentioning pyboard.
This pseudo-section causes artifacts with latexpdf generation (almost
empty page with list containing literal "genindex", "modeindex", "search"
items). For HTML docs, these sections can be accessed from "home" page.
We don't use alpha/beta/RC, so for us version and release should be the
same, or it leads to confusion (for example, current, 1.9.1 docs are
marked as 1.9 at places).
The idea is to allow to define a kind of "macros" for repeatitive text,
so all occurrances can be updated in one place. Unfortunately, RST doesn't
support replacements with arguments, which limits usefulness of them and
should be taken into account.
We have enough terms or references throughout the docs which may be not
immediately clear or have some important nuances. Referencing terms in
gloassary is the best way to deal with that.
The old intro talked about "differences", but there were hardly any
sections describing differences, mostly MicroPython specific features.
On the other hand, we now have real "differences" chapter, though it's
mostly concerned with stdlib differences.
So, try to avoid confusion by changing wording and linking to the other
chapters and contrasting them with what is described in "MicroPython
language".
Previously, only "selected chapters" were shown in left-pane ToC (of
Read The Docs theme). These chapters were selected out of order. The
rest of chapters were hidden beyond "Documentation Contents" pseudo-
chapter. This arguably led only to confusion, as many people probably
never tried to open that pseudo-chapter, and those who did, were
confused. Such organization is even worse for PDF output, causing
chapters go in mix-mashed order.
So, instead move to single clean ToC. This will allow readers of HTML
to have access to any doc content at their fingertips (and straight
before their eyes), and will allow to finally have clean PDF docs.
Move hardware-specific optimizations to the very end of document, and
add visible note that it gives an example for Pyboard. Remove references
to specific hardware technologies, so the doc can be more naturally
used across ports. Various markup updates to adhere to the latest
docs conventions.
This causes `symbol` syntax to be equivalent to :any:`symbol`, which is
in turn the easiest way to cross-reference an arbitrary symbol in the
docs:
http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/markup/inline.html#role-any
:any: requires at least Sphinx 1.3 (for reference, Ubuntu 16.03 ships
with 1.3.6, the latest 1.6.3).
Any many of our docs, `symbol` is misused to specify arguments to
functions, etc. Refactoring that is in progress. (CODECONVENTIONS
already specify proper syntax for both arguments and xrefs, based
on CPython conventions).
Damien George