2. Directory Structure

The source distribution for the standard Python documentation contains a large number of directories. While third-party documents do not need to be placed into this structure or need to be placed within a similar structure, it can be helpful to know where to look for examples and tools when developing new documents using the Python documentation tools. This section describes this directory structure.

The documentation sources are usually placed within the Python source distribution as the top-level directory Doc/, but are not dependent on the Python source distribution in any way.

The Doc/ directory contains a few files and several subdirectories. The files are mostly self-explanatory, including a README and a Makefile. The directories fall into three categories:

Document Sources
The sources for each document are placed in a separate directory. These directories are given short, three-character names:

Directory   Document Title  
api/ The Python/C API 
doc/ Documenting Python 
ext/ Extending and Embedding the Python Interpreter 
lib/ Python Library Reference 
mac/ Macintosh Module Reference 
ref/ Python Reference Manual 
tut/ Python Tutorial 

Format-Specific Output
Most output formats have a directory which contains a Makefile which controls the generation of that format and provides storage for the formatted documents. The only variations within this category are the Portable Document Format (PDF) and PostScript versions are placed in the directories paper-a4/ and paper-letter/ (this causes all the temporary files created by to be kept in the same place for each paper size, where they can be more easily ignored).

Directory   Output Formats  
html/ HTML output 
info/ GNU info output 
paper-a4/ PDF and PostScript, A4 paper 
paper-letter/ PDF and PostScript, US-Letter paper 

Supplemental Files
Some additional directories are used to store supplemental files used for the various processes. Directories are included for the shared document classes, the 2HTML support, template files for various document components, and the scripts used to perform various steps in the formatting processes.

Directory   Contents  
perl/ Support for 2HTML processing 
templates/ Example files for source documents 
texinputs/ Style implementation for  
tools/ Custom processing scripts 


Send comments on this document to python-docs@python.org.


Banner.Novgorod.Ru