WebFunction metadata

Why the metadata is normalized the way it is, and why the name shown on the page is not the name that is stored. What each field holds is in web-function.md.

Why the description is passed through cleandoc()

It is normalized for portability: in Python 3.11 and 3.12 a multi-line docstring arrives with the indentation of the surrounding code, while 3.13 already removes it at compile time.

Why only the first letter

Only the first letter is uppercased, so an acronym or a CamelCase word keeps its shape. This happens no matter where the name comes from: it makes no difference whether it was derived from fn.__name__ or written by hand in name=. A name that is already written for display does not change, because it has no _ and its first letter is already uppercase.

The same touch-up is applied in all three places the name is displayed — the page's <title> and <h1>, and the link in the space index — so the index link and the page it opens never name the same function in two ways.