Incorrect Rendering of Python Docstrings in Help Panel

[Fanchengyan]

System details:

Positron and OS details:

Positron Version: 2024.11.0 (Universal) build 116
Code - OSS Version: 1.93.0
Commit: 8b1688a
Date: 2024-10-28T02:50:56.075Z
Electron: 30.4.0
Chromium: 124.0.6367.243
Node.js: 20.15.1
V8: 12.4.254.20-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.1.0

Interpreter details:

Python 3.11.9

Describe the issue:

Positron is not displaying Python docstrings correctly in the help panel. Many characters are not rendered properly.

Here is an example of the issue with matplotlib.pyplot.contour:

Steps to reproduce the issue:

1. Open a new Python notebook in Positron.
2. Run the following code:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.contour?

Expected or desired behavior:

Same as documentation at https://matplotlib.org/stable/api/_as_gen/matplotlib.pyplot.contour.html

Were there any error messages in the UI, Output panel, or Developer Tools console?

No

[petetronic]

Thank you @Fanchengyan, I'm able to reproduce this formatting issue. There is some outstanding work to improve Python help display, similar to #3692. I'll send this to triage.

[ntluong95]

It deserves a nicer format and keyword highlighting

[juliasilge]

Originally posted by @AlbertRapp in #6135:

Hi everyone 👋

I'm trying to use Positron more because I've been looking forward to having the Help page directly integrated into the IDE. However, the formatting is off. For example, this is how the polars map_elements() function documentation looks on their website:

I can make out parameters quite quickly in the first couple of lines. But this is how it looks in Positron's help page:

For some reason, line breaks are not the same as on the website and code font is huge compared to regular text. Are there some options I need to tweak to make it look right?

[juliasilge]

We should also improve the rendering for Python packages that use quartodoc, such as chatlas:

[juliasilge]

We should also improve the rendering for packages like scanpy as reported in #8741, although it seems to have unusual formatting for its docstrings:

https://github.com/scverse/scanpy/blob/main/src/scanpy/plotting/_matrixplot.py