On 5/28/2013 3:39 PM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:

On Tue, 28 May 2013 15:06:39 -0400 Terry Reedy wrote:

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Yes, Nick suggested README instead of what I had. I want a prefix to keep it near the top of a directory listing even when other non 'test_xxx' files are added. I thing '_' wold be better though.

I don't think "prefixing with a weird character

'_' is not weird for Python names.

so that the filename show up top" is a very elegant trick,

I disagree. Books have Table of Contents, Preface, and Foreword sections at the front for a reason: if they are present, they are easy and obvious to find. READMEs are like a preface*, sometimes with an annotated Contents. They logically belong at the top for the same reason. A long title for this how-to file, which I would prefer, would be something like "_Writing-Testing-Running_Idle_Tests", or "_Idle_Test-Writing_Guidelines", or "A_Guide_to_Idle_Tests", or "An_Idle_Test_HOWTO". *At least this one is. Some are addenda that have little to do with the other files in the directory. They might better have a different name, like 'Manual Corrections' (which would sort after 'Manual', where it belongs), "Starting the game', 'Windows differences', etc. I don't know if 'readme.txt' was common before DOS 8.3 filename limitations, but that limit is mostly gone. I have used this 'trick' for decades. Another file that does not belong in the main alpha list is a project-specific template for the .py files in a directory.

and we don't use it for other directories.

I think we should. Seriously. Maybe with more descriptive names.

"README.txt" *will* be easily visible because of the all-caps filename.

Somewhat easy, but only if one thinks to look for it. I only found 4 used outside of Lib/test/*. Which of the following big directories have a README? /Lib /Lib/idlelib /Lib/test /Tools/scripts Would it not be easier to discover if the 'preface' file were always at or near the top?

"Rename in hg" -> "hg rename"

Thanks. Found it with Google and read that it works well in hg. I will also check if TortoiseHG has an easy gui equivalent (rt click on file to rename). Terry

On 5/28/2013 7:42 PM, MRAB wrote:

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"A_Guide_to_Idle_Tests", or "An_Idle_Test_HOWTO".

[snip] I'm somehow not happy about "_README", what with a single underscore indicating "internal" in Python code.

The file is internal to the subset of IDLE developers writing tests, but...

Perhaps it would be a bit more Pythonic to have "_README_" instead (dunder would be overdoing it, perhaps). :-)

Guido said README.txt on the committers list.