Export a pdf report from a python script

rev2(20 Mar 2023) : some improvements to work with Black autoformatter

To have the possibility to make a report linked to a python script is an interesting function. It allows to keep notes about the script (why, how), to show and share the results. A good location of the report is inside the script itself. A pdf file as documentation has in addition a confortable readability. Tools like Pweave offer this functionalities, but my knowledge is inadequate to solve the problems that may occur... or occurred like the last time I updated my Manjaro laptop...

So I came to this solution, probably with a lower performance but that uses standard tools, explicit and simple steps.

More details in the python file or the pdf file

The expected features are :

• To export a pdf file that includes :
  • The python code cut in chunks
  • All the needed text to explain the goal and outputs of the script
  • Math and formulas
  • The outputs of the script, to the console or graphs (matplotlib)
• The script shall remain directly executable with no modifications
• The only maintained file is the script

The script shall include :

• Some codes to store the outputs
• Lines of markdown starting by a mark
• Some lines to include external text files

The mark is a unique sequence of characters starting by "#" (comment in python)

Then the script is preprocessed to :

• remove the first lines (python3 and coding specification)
• remove the mark
• insert the external files
• store the result into an intermediate markdown file

The markdown file is then transformed in pdf with pandoc