I want to get an improved, backward compatible patch into the standard package fairly soon, so over the next few days I will see if I can't come up with something that covers most of the ideas suggested here, including Gregor's libraries to some extent. I will of course post it for comments/testing before I send it along.

I volunteer to help add doc-strings (with examples) to the code if you would like such assistance.

I would also suggest that those of us who are interested in turtle graphics consider what we want (even IF we want) in an extended turtle package as well, and how much we would want to push for its inclusion in the standard libraries.

My sense is that some of us will be fine if the basic turtle.py is usable, but others will really want more. Figuring out the "what" and "how much" may take some time. Certainly Gregor's Xturtle package will give us some direction in thinking about it.

One other source of ideas for graphics beyond turtles is the ACM Java Task Force, which has just released a new version of the proposed acm package: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts//jtf/ Creating standard educational libraries like this for Python could be a real boon. Toby