Adding Help (Information[]) Text

Now let us add some help to the Hello function so that World will know about it. This is done by adding a class variable summary_text and by adding XML/HTML markup in the docstring for the Hello class.

from mathics.builtin.base import Builtin, String
from mathics.core.evaluation import Evaluation

class Hello(Builtin):
  """
  <dl>
    <dt>Hello[$person$]
    <dd>Print a "Hello" message customized for $person$.

  This is an example of how Python Builtin-Symbol documentation works.
  </dl>
  """

  summary_text = 'prints "Hello, <name>"'

  def eval(self, person: String, evaluation: Evaluation) -> String:
    "Hello[person_String]"
        return String(f"Hello, {person.value}!")

The class variable summary_text provides the text when you type ?Hello:

In[1]:= ?Hello
prints "Hello <name>"
Out[1]= Null

In[2]:= ??Hello

    Hello[person]
        Print a "Hello" message customized for person.

    This is an example of how Python Builtin-Symbol documentation works.

    Attributes[Hello] = {Protected}

Out[2]= Null

In[3]:= Hello["Rocky"]
Out[3]= "Hello, Rocky!"

The XML tagging that gets created from the above renders in the Django interface like this:

In the Django interface on the right-hand side, I hit the “?” button and started typing “H E L L” and that was enough for the Django to find it. Django will pick up this change without having to restart it!

This is how the text appears getting help via ? in mathicsscript:

See For Help Text for more a list of help-related markup.