[Idle-dev] IDLE "shell" (was: IDLE interpreter window)

[Martijn Faassen]

Tony J Ibbs (Tibs) wrote:
> OK - I see now that my original description has led to confusion. The
> "separate input area" *was* just the current line that was being typed (and
> *possibly* the current lines that had been typed and not yet acted on, if
> typeahead worked in the obvious manner). The character to 'enter' the code
> was the enter key.

I'm not sure if your original description led to confusion, I was just
speculating vaguely myself about such a setup, but concluded that such
a setup of my own speculation would be clunky. :) 

> Which is why, in reply to Guido, I was happy with his
> future plans - as far as I can see the only difference between what he is
> proposing and (more or less) what I was describing is the presence or
> absence of a horizontal line between the current command line and the
> "history". And I don't care if that's there or not...

Well, if the line is there you may be dealing with two widgets and into the
resulting focusing problems, if the line is absent you're dealing with the
same widget. But ignoring technical details, yeah, the presence of the 
seperator  seems to be the only difference.

Personally, I'd rather not have the seperator there, as I've noticed that
in situations with seperator it confuses me. My mind seems to expect that
when I type a line of input, that line should scroll up (or the input prompt 
scrolls down, depending if one is at the bottom of the window yet or not),
becoming part of the 'history'. With a visual seperator there my mind doesn't
see that anymore, confusing me. The input may become seperated from where
it appears (I type something in the input area, and what I type appears
at the top of the screen..weird). 

Regards,

Martijn