[Biopython-announce] Biopython Tutorial no longer written in LaTeX, but RST

[Peter Cock]

Hello all,

It has taken years, and efforts at several of the BOSC CoFest meetings,
but finally the changes to convert the Biopython Tutorial and Cookbook
from LaTeX into reStructuredText (RST) are live:

https://biopython.org/docs/dev/

We had previously standardized all the in-code documentation using
Python's docstring system into RST and switched from the obsolete
epydoc tool to using Sphinx for for the API documentation:

https://biopython.org/docs/dev/api/

This change means Sphinx is now also used to build the Tutorial and
Cookbook at the same time, giving consistent HTML output. We can
in theory also output this in PDF or eBook formats (not done yet).

The RST markup language is similar to Markdown, but slightly more
powerful for larger documents, and was developed within the Python
ecosystem. This change means new contributors won't need to learn
LaTeX, but also we don't need the LaTeX tools installed to build the
documentation - something which was a barrier to doing this as part
of the continuous integration testing.

At the time of writing the old URLs do not yet redirect:

http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial.html
http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial.pdf

We will keep the historic versions as there are, e.g.

http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial-1.82.html
http://biopython.org/DIST/docs/tutorial/Tutorial-1.82.pdf

I would encourage all of you to proof read your favorite sections
on the new Sphinx output, and if you spot a typo there is an
"Edit on GitHub" link top right of each page... many eyes make
light work?

Thanks all,

Peter