Change delete_pages() API

[fgallaire]

delete_pages() API looks weird to me.

Have to loop manualy on delete_page() to delete multiple non-successive pages.
delete_pages() should have only one argument, a list of int of page and do this job.

from_page, to_page arguments easily replaced by range()

[JorjMcKie]

The performance difference of multiple doc.delete_page() executions and one excution of doc.delete_pages() for successive pages is very significant! It is a costly method, because links pointing to any deleted page must be removed from all the remaining pages.
That's why I have two methods at all. Internally, delete_page() is just a wrapper for delete_pages() with identical arguments.
Yes: I could accept a range or slice parameter for delete_pages(), but only one that has step=1. Because you would use 2 arguments for range, there would be no advantage.

[fgallaire]

I have to delete multiple non-successive pages, it's a common usecase, I want a method to do so, in a simple/correct world it should be delete_pages() with a list as argument.
Accepting range to have a clean API, very efficient if it's a range, and just ok for a list of non-successive pages.

[JorjMcKie]

I am very busy at the moment, so this will have to wait a while.
On the other hand, the code doing the actual work is all there. Your request amounts to technically just re-arranging and shuffling around existing material.
So if you would submit a PR things could be faster.

[JorjMcKie]

Ignore my previous post. I a found a simple way to implement this:
In adition to the old argument spec with keywords, now also a list, tuple or range object can be specified.
Best of all: these sequences need not contain consecutive page numbers - gaps are ok without performance penalties.

Will publish this with the coming version 1.18.13.

[JorjMcKie]

Fixed in v1.18.13, which was just published.