<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Feb 8, 2006, at 2:26 PM, Dethe Elza wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">Hmmm.<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>If they don't know that Python is a programming language, why <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">are they here?<SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN>Familiarity with the terminal app and knowing how to <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">save python as a text file are certainly prerequisites at this point <SPAN class="Apple-converted-space"> </SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="4" style="font: 13.0px Lucida Grande">though.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV>I agree with the first point -- we're not looking *that* broadly for a Python audience.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">But my main motive for working on this question is the hope that the second point will *not* be true. One characteristic of the Mac-user-just-coming-to-Python audience that I'm aiming to help, or entice, or at least not alienate, is unfamiliarity at the Terminal that may inclulde distaste and border on panic.</SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">Terminal is Unix. OS X is not, in a sense. Some people have come to Mac now that its OS is "really" Unix. A much larger number -- including, I believe, a fair number of potential Python programmers -- come to OS X from OS 9 or System 7 or 8 or Apple ][. I just don't believe it should be <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;">necessary</SPAN> for those people, <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline;">at first</SPAN>, to take on even the beginnings of Unix in order to brave taking on Python. (We can sucker 'em in to the delights of the command line later on.)</SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Charles</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV></BODY></HTML>