Discord.py: Redesign HelpFormatter

[Rapptz]

The current design is intimidating for users and too complicated for most people. Reconsider a design that makes it better to use and properly implement all help command related things in the HelpFormatter (e.g. the i18n attributes and the help attributes dictionary)

A new design should have the following checklist.

• [x] It implements the logic for the help command itself.
• [x] allows usage of embeds
• [x] is i18n friendly
• [x] easily extensible
• [x] can be disabled by passing formatter=None
  
  
  
  • this requires the use of a sentinel type as the default.
  
  

This is just an initial checklist. Feel free to use this issue as a wish list of what you want to happen.

[lganWebb]

Maybe add emoji pagination functionality.
I know this is a thing that you can make yourself, however it would be nice to see this in the actual lib itself

[bryanforbes]

Maybe add emoji pagination functionality.

I think this would be best as an opt-in in the ext directory rather than in HelpFormatter proper.

[iomintz]

One of the issues I had with HelpFormatter was that most of the work is done by one long method, format. In order to customize the behavior, I had to copy and paste the default implementation of that entire method, rather than overriding a few methods. Additionally, I wanted to customize how subcommands were formatted, and that's controlled by _add_subcommands_to_page, which is marked private.

[lganWebb]

@bryanforbes I see your point

[bryanforbes]

A few things I've run into when trying to format help for a couple of bots I've written:

1. Command.signature returns a formatted string that HelpFormatter.get_command_signature(). That should probably be done in HelpFormatter so it can be overridden at the bot level.
2. Breaking up HelpFormatter.format() into some override-able methods like:
   
   
   
   • format_bot_commands(commands: Iterable[Tuple[str, Command]]) -> None
   
   
   • format_command(command: Command) -> None
   
   
   • format_group(group: Group) -> None
   
   
3. Add parameters for sorting commands so it doesn't have to be done in format(): HelpFormatter.filter_command_list(*, sorted: bool = False, key: Optional[Callable[..., bool]] = None).
4. Add HelpFormatter.get_beginning_note() to compliment HelpFormatter.get_ending_note().

[BluePhoenixGame]

I would honestly hope that it would be made more self explanatory. Because "some functions" doesn't help, what functions? no documentation? no examples? I tried to work with it but gave up because of those questions. It basically was no easy way, you basically had to rewrite the whole full thing from what i could pick up.