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The Source Assistant tool (in Wing IDE Personal and higher) can be used while viewing or editing source code to display additional information about the point of definition of source constructs located near the insertion caret's position.

The display will include links to the point of definition of a selection symbol, a guess at the symbol's type (when available) and a link to the type's point of definition, and docstrings and call signature when available.

For symbols in the Python standard library, Wing will attempt to compute a documentation URL whenever possible. These point to http://docs.Python.org/ but can be redirected to another server with the Source Analysis > Advanced > Python Docs URL Prefix preference. To access locally stored documentation, a local http server must be used because # bookmark references do not work with file: URLs.

Note that the source assistant is also integrated with the auto-completer, and will show information as you scroll through the completion list. Similarly, it will updated as focus moves into the Project and Source Browser tools.

When working in the editor, auto-completer, project view, or source browser, the source assistant is fueled by Wing's Python source code analysis engine. Because of Python's dynamic nature, Wing cannot always determine the types of all values, but presents as much information as it can glean from the source code.

When a debug process is active, or when working in the Python Shell, Wing also extracts relevant information from the live runtime state. Since this yields complete and correct type information even for code that Wing's static analysis engine cannot understand, it is often useful to run to a breakpoint before designing new code that is intended to work in that context.

For more hints on helping Wing understand your source code, see Source Code Analysis and Helping Wing Analyze Code.