brechtm
De-couple source and destination from filesystem
The primary Python API for ricohtype (in particular, rinoh.frontend.rst and rinoh.document.Document) assumes reading from files and rendering to files, with paths on the filesystem.
This is not a necessary part of converting formats from one to another, and it makes it needlessly difficult to make rinoh part of a larger flow within an application.
I propose changing the API so that the API does not primarily assume every parsing is done from a file, and does not primarily assume every render will be to an output file.
Docutils, for example, parses from a text (and it is up to the caller how to get that text), and does not assume any files.
I would expect, for example to be able to use rinohtype this way in a Python application:
import rinoh.frontend.rst
import rinoh.templates
# Generate the reST content somehow.
source_document = """Lorem ipsum, **dolor** sit amet."""
parser = rinoh.frontend.rst.ReStructuredTextReader()
document_tree = parser.parse(source_document)
template = rinoh.templates.Article()
pdf_content = template.render(document_tree)
# ... continue processing the PDF content ...
The rinoh library could do all this, if the API were de-coupled from assumptions about real files on the filesystem.
The convenience of handling input and output files is very good, but can be provided as a higher-level wrapper to handle the files, while leaving the Template and Document and Parser clean of any such handling.
What do you think? I can help with this, I think this is best for a library intended for use in applications. But not sure if the direction is what you want.
You are absolutely correct, of course. I always planned to also offer a friendly API. Due to lack of time, the focus is still on the command line renderer rinoh and the Sphinx builder.
A pull request would be highly appreciated! I don't have a strong idea about what the API should look like in this case, so feel free to suggest something. This StackOverflow questions might be useful: Should I pass in filenames to be opened, or open files?
