
Introduction
************

Python's documentation has long been considered to be good for a free
programming language.  There are a number of reasons for this, the
most important being the early commitment of Python's creator, Guido
van Rossum, to providing documentation on the language and its
libraries, and the continuing involvement of the user community in
providing assistance for creating and maintaining documentation.

The involvement of the community takes many forms, from authoring to
bug reports to just plain complaining when the documentation could be
more complete or easier to use.

This document is aimed at authors and potential authors of
documentation for Python.  More specifically, it is for people
contributing to the standard documentation and developing additional
documents using the same tools as the standard documents.  This guide
will be less useful for authors using the Python documentation tools
for topics other than Python, and less useful still for authors not
using the tools at all.

If your interest is in contributing to the Python documentation, but
you don't have the time or inclination to learn reStructuredText and
the markup structures documented here, there's a welcoming place for
you among the Python contributors as well.  Any time you feel that you
can clarify existing documentation or provide documentation that's
missing, the existing documentation team will gladly work with you to
integrate your text, dealing with the markup for you. Please don't let
the material in this document stand between the documentation and your
desire to help out!
