[Idle-dev] A satisfied user

[Bruce Sherwood]

I've been using Dave Scherer's new version of IDLE, and I really like it.

To me the most important aspect is that its interactivity for whole
programs is very close to what  the interactive interpreter provides for
single statements. I'll interject that as a Python novice I'm uncomfortable
using the interactive interpreter because I want to be able to work
incrementally, including correcting rather than re-creating statements in
the face of expected incorrect syntax. For a novice I believe it is
typically more appropriate to be working on and revising a program rather
than typing single lines. And beyond the novice level, it is really nice to
have high interactivity.

With the new IDLE, on Windows the single keypress F5 saves and runs, and
even aborts a current run and starts another, whether pressed in the source
file or in the stdout window. And I like the single continuous stdout, with
a header for each run and scrolling to the header on each run. And I like
the abbreviated error tracing, and the quick access from error to offending
line.

As far as the user interface goes, the only thing I can think of to raise
the interactivity even higher has to do with a detail of window focus. If I
click on a graphics output window to close it, I then have to click in the
source window to get focus there again. Could closing the graphics window
automatically restore focus to the source window that was last edited?

Bruce Sherwood
Carnegie Mellon University