Documentation confusion

[DavidMarks]

Have just got a pyboard (birthday present) to challenge my ancient brain and already I'm afraid, I'm in trouble. I found the pyboard tutorial online but it seems I can only print it one pag at a time. I then found the full documentation headed Micropython Documentation Release 1.9.4 dated Oct 01 2018. Printer ran out of paper part way through and I had by then lost the web page. Searched and found it again (or so I thought), but although it has the same title heading and date it is different. My first part print ended at page 53 headed 4.1.7 ubinascii - binary /ascii conversions. the "new" version i downloaded with the same title page has 4.1.7 on page 31 and is headed 5.1.7 uos - basic "operating system " services. All very confusing. Could some kind soul please explain !

[Roberthh]

I cannot access the PDF version either. Years ago it worked. Better use the Web version of the documentation.
You are able to create various formats of the documentation from the doc sources at the MicroPython Github repository, like html or epub. But that requires a few steps more just downloading a PDF and printing it. I just failed to create a PDF from the docs. It requires latex compoments, which I do not haveinstalled. HTML works, and ePub to some extend.

[mattyt]

I just built the MicroPython.pdf and also put together a Docker container (micropython/build-docs) with the dependencies so you can build it yourself. To do so, take a clone of the MicroPython repository and run 'make latexpdf' in the container like so:

Code: Select all

❯ docker run -ti --rm -v /your/mp/clone:/mp --workdir /mp/docs micropython/build-docs make latexpdf

Currently you'll need to hit return when the pdf build pauses - I haven't figured out why that's occurring yet. There are also a number of warnings but the output is still quite usable. The pdf is built inside your clone at docs/build/latex.

I'll let Damien know what I did to build the PDF and see if we can fix it in the build pipeline.

[dvansteenwegen]

I'll let Damien know what I did to build the PDF and see if we can fix it in the build pipeline.

Since working with this kind of generated documentation seems to be something new to the topic starter, I'd think that working with a docker container to generate the pdf would be a bridge too far. Maybe you could share the pdf for him?

<edit> Oh. You did. Terribly sorry, missed the link in your post. My mistake!

[dvansteenwegen]

All very confusing. Could some kind soul please explain !

You're not alone finding this confusing. Learning where to find documentation and how to use it/where to find help was one of the steepest learning curves I had when starting to work with OSS. It's just something that takes time and (lots of) effort, but is well worth it.

The MicroPython community has a rather helpful and kind spirit, so you should find help when you need it.