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<H1><A NAME="SECTION000200000000000000000">
1. Introduction</A>
</H1>

<P>
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.

<P>
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.  All of these forms of input from
  the community have proved useful during the time I've been involved
  in maintaining the documentation.

<P>
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.

<P>
The material in this guide is intended to assist authors using the
  Python documentation tools.  It includes information on the source
  distribution of the standard documentation, a discussion of the
  document types, reference material on the markup defined in the
  document classes, a list of the external tools needed for processing
  documents, and reference material on the tools provided with the
  documentation resources.  At the end, there is also a section
  discussing future directions for the Python documentation and where
  to turn for more information.

<P>
<p>
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