diff --git a/Include/codecs.h b/Include/codecs.h
index 257629d383df..708d476397ab 100644
--- a/Include/codecs.h
+++ b/Include/codecs.h
@@ -15,27 +15,49 @@ Written by Marc-Andre Lemburg (mal@lemburg.com).
 
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ */
 
+/* Register a new codec search function.
+
+   As side effect, this tries to load the encodings package, if not
+   yet done, to make sure that it is always first in the list of
+   search functions.
+
+   The search_function's refcount is incremented by this function. */
+
 extern DL_IMPORT(int) PyCodec_Register(
        PyObject *search_function
        );
 
+/* Codec register lookup API.
+
+   Looks up the given encoding and returns a tuple (encoder, decoder,
+   stream reader, stream writer) of functions which implement the
+   different aspects of processing the encoding.
+
+   The encoding string is looked up converted to all lower-case
+   characters. This makes encodings looked up through this mechanism
+   effectively case-insensitive.
+
+   If no codec is found, a KeyError is set and NULL returned. 
+
+   As side effect, this tries to load the encodings package, if not
+   yet done. This is part of the lazy load strategy for the encodings
+   package.
+
+ */
+
 extern DL_IMPORT(PyObject *) _PyCodec_Lookup(
        const char *encoding
        );
 
-extern DL_IMPORT(PyObject *) PyCodec_Encoder(
-       const char *encoding
-       );
+/* Generic codec based encoding API.
 
-extern DL_IMPORT(PyObject *) PyCodec_Decoder(
-       const char *encoding
-       );
+   object is passed through the encoder function found for the given
+   encoding using the error handling method defined by errors. errors
+   may be NULL to use the default method defined for the codec.
+   
+   Raises a LookupError in case no encoder can be found.
 
-extern DL_IMPORT(PyObject *) PyCodec_StreamReader(
-       const char *encoding,
-       PyObject *stream,
-       const char *errors
-       );
+ */
 
 extern DL_IMPORT(PyObject *) PyCodec_Encode(
        PyObject *object,
@@ -43,12 +65,58 @@ extern DL_IMPORT(PyObject *) PyCodec_Encode(
        const char *errors
        );
 
+/* Generic codec based decoding API.
+
+   object is passed through the decoder function found for the given
+   encoding using the error handling method defined by errors. errors
+   may be NULL to use the default method defined for the codec.
+   
+   Raises a LookupError in case no encoder can be found.
+
+ */
+
 extern DL_IMPORT(PyObject *) PyCodec_Decode(
        PyObject *object,
        const char *encoding,
        const char *errors
        );
 
+/* --- Codec Lookup APIs -------------------------------------------------- 
+
+   All APIs return a codec object with incremented refcount and are
+   based on _PyCodec_Lookup().  The same comments w/r to the encoding
+   name also apply to these APIs.
+
+*/
+
+/* Get an encoder function for the given encoding. */
+
+extern DL_IMPORT(PyObject *) PyCodec_Encoder(
+       const char *encoding
+       );
+
+/* Get a decoder function for the given encoding. */
+
+extern DL_IMPORT(PyObject *) PyCodec_Decoder(
+       const char *encoding
+       );
+
+/* Get a StreamReader factory function for the given encoding. */
+
+extern DL_IMPORT(PyObject *) PyCodec_StreamReader(
+       const char *encoding,
+       PyObject *stream,
+       const char *errors
+       );
+
+/* Get a StreamWriter factory function for the given encoding. */
+
+extern DL_IMPORT(PyObject *) PyCodec_StreamWriter(
+       const char *encoding,
+       PyObject *stream,
+       const char *errors
+       );
+
 #ifdef __cplusplus
 }
 #endif