# 2. Directory Structure

The source distribution for the standard Python documentation contains a large number of directories. While third-party documents do not need to be placed into this structure or need to be placed within a similar structure, it can be helpful to know where to look for examples and tools when developing new documents using the Python documentation tools. This section describes this directory structure.

The documentation sources are usually placed within the Python source distribution as the top-level subdirectory "`Doc/`", but are independent of the Python source distribution.

The "`Doc/`" directory contains a few files and several subdirectories. The files are mostly self-explanatory, including a "`README`" and a "`Makefile`". The directories fall into three categories:

Document Sources
  The LATEX sources for each document are placed in a separate directory. These directories are given short, three-character names.

Format-Specific Output
  Most output formats have a directory which contains a "`Makefile`" which controls the generation of that format and provides storage for the formatted documents. The only variations within this category are the Portable Document Format (PDF) and PostScript versions are placed in the directories "`paper-a4/`" and "`paper-letter/`".

Supplemental Files
  Some additional directories are used to store supplemental files used for the various processes. Directories are included for the shared LATEX document classes, the LATEX2HTML support, template files for various document components, and the scripts used to perform various steps in the formatting processes.