Question

I just found Sublime Text 2 and it’s awesome. The only thing I really miss is the ability to view the doc string of the function I’m dealing with. Are there any plugins that can do this?

for example:

def f(x):
    '''a doc string for f'''
    print x

f # << at this point, either automatically or with a keystroke,
  # I would like to be able to somehow view "a doc string for f"

Edit: I’ve already attempted to using SublimeCodeIntel and SublimeRope, neither have such support.

Edit2: It should also work for other modules in the open project.

Answer 1

By tweaking SublimeCodeIntel, you can disable the “jump” to the file where the function is defined — this will allow you to see the function definition in the status bar upon alt-clicking.

To do this, select Preferences > Browse Packages and then open SublimeCodeIntel/SublimeCodeIntel.py.

Go to class GotoPythonDefinition(sublime_plugin.TextCommand): and add a return at line 890 so that the first lines of _trigger read:

        def _trigger(defns):
            if defns is not None:
                defn = defns[0]
                if defn.name and defn.doc:
                    msg = "%s: %s" % (defn.name, defn.doc)
                    logger(view, 'info', msg, timeout=3000)
                    return

(you can also tweak the msg string formatting and remove the defn.name to save a bit of status bar space).

It’s a bit disorienting to have to look down at the status bar to see the definition… also, the status bar won’t be able to display long definitions. However, it’s a start. Hopefully, tooltip/popup control will be made available through the API so that definitions can appear in the view next to alt-clicked functions.