Illustration of possible extra documentation for generic SciPy optimization interface.

minimize_doc.py

def minimize_doc(method=None):
    """Additional arguments for SciPy minimisers.

    * BFGS
      - Arg 1 descr
      - Arg 2 descr

    * Newton
      - Newton arg 1
      - Newton arg 2

    """
    if method is None:
        print minimize_doc.__doc__
    else:
        sections = minimize_doc.__doc__.split('*')[1:]
        sections = [s.strip() for s in sections]
        sections = [s for s in sections if s.startswith(method)]
        print '\n'.join(sections)

if __name__ == "__main__":

    print 'Print everything:'
    minimize_doc()

    print "Let's ask for Newton only:"
    minimize_doc('Newton')