PyCharm 1.5 Early Access: ultimate docs support + Django templates debugging

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Today we’re happy to announce the immediate availability of the first Early Access Preview build of PyCharm 1.5, the next major release of PyCharm.

The big theme of this release is a comprehensive documentation support. PyCharm now understands not only your code, but also the documentation surrounding it. The big theme boils down into a number of specific features described below:

Another big addition in this release is Django templates debugging. This deserves a separate blog post, so stay tuned for announcements in the coming days (meanwhile, a screenshot).



External Documentation

To open the documentation Web site for an element under the caret in your Web browser, press Shift-F1 (View | External Documentation). The structure of the documentation sites for the Python standard library, Django and Google App Engine is known to PyCharm by default; for other libraries, you can define the URL to be opened for a particular element yourself (and a number of libraries are preconfigured by default).



Rendered Docstrings

The Quick Documentation Popup in PyCharm now renders the Epydoc or reStructuredText markup in your documentation strings, instead of displaying the docstrings as raw text.



Syntax Highlighting and Completion in Docstrings

PyCharm now highlights the markup in Epydoc and reStructuredText docstrings and provides code completion for tags and tag parameters. Also, it checks that the names of the parameters match between the docstrings and the code, and updates the docstring automatically when a parameter is renamed.



Docstring Stub Generation

PyCharm can now automatically generate a docstring stub for a method, according to the format specified in Settings | Python Integrated Tools (either Epydoc or reStructuredText). To generate the stub, press Alt-Enter on the method name, or simply type the opening triple quotes of a docstring and press Enter.



reStructuredText support

reStructuredText is now a fully supported file type in PyCharm, with syntax highlighting and some code completion support.



PyCharm 1.5 release is planned around the end of May and will be a free update for everyone with a license.

Meanwhile, you are welcome to download PyCharm 1.5 EAP from the EAP page and we are looking forward to your feedback.