restructuredText, docstring and python interactive shell -

i using restructuredtext document code, nice offline html pages means of epydoc.

results brilliant. drawback when use python interactive shell, help() function not parse rest metadata in documentation strings, , instead displays whole thing is.

is there way have help() minimal parsing of docstrings?

i don't expect rendering of italic fonts or hyperlinks, @ least minimal cleanup increase readbility.

the help() function gets added builtin namespace site module, can customize creating sitecustomize.py module somewhere on path (apparently it's kept in site-packages).

then in sitecustomize.py file add whatever customizations want.

you handle couple of ways:

if want change (apparent) behavior of help() function itself, wrap function in decorator, like:

def help_wrapper(func):     def inner(*args):         results = func(*args)         return your_cleanup_function_here(results) = help_wrapper(help) 

i prefer different solution, because there's no telling cleanup function output isn't written in restructuredtext.

so create wrapper function:

def my_help(*args):     return your_cleanup_function_here(help(*args)) 

this way still have access original help() function if need it.

caveat: cautious when doing things in sitecustomize.py, whatever here affect entire interpreter session (and every interpreter session), can lead unintended consequences.