[x] Add some instructions about dealing with missing dependencies. I guess the way to go nowaways is to use environments, so you should give some info how someone makes their own venv.
[x] along that vein, talk about how to deal with the new PEP standards
[x] think again about some reorganization. for example collecting get_err_str and formatted printing stuff together in a module
[x] remove everything else that isn't being used... there's so much extra stuff none of us has used that is very hard to read and debug.
i think it would be nice to get a v1.0 out. here's a list of things to finish: