[Visualpython-devel] Re: [Idle-dev] Py-CVS Release 2.1 Merge

[Bruce Sherwood]

> I also would like to see Windows specific hacks that make it possible
> to invoke IDLE as the editor by right-clicking any .py or .pyw file
> and selecting "Edit File" from the context menu, even if IDLE already
> runs.  This may only work when the win32all extensions are loaded.

Agreed. Dave Scherer has been asking for that with VPython but I've 
neglected setting up the Visual installer to do that. I'm using Inno Setup 
(with extensions) which has very good flexibility, so I'm guessing I can do 
this for VPython even if it isn't part of the Python installer.

> When the goal is learning Python (rather than physics), I find the
> shell the best tool there is.

For the reasons given in my own postings, which have probably crossed 
yours, I respectfully but forcefully disagree. Both Ruth Chabay and I 
individually tried hard to learn Python in the shell environment and both 
of us just got very confused. We didn't want to see what one statement did, 
we wanted to put several statements together. Given our very bad 
experiences, I'm curious what evidence you have for the shell being a good 
tool for learning Python? And what are you comparing to? Dave Scherer's 
highly interactive editor, or a batch oriented environment with no 
interactivity?

Bruce Sherwood

P.S. On the subject of installers, a couple days ago Ruth Chabay and I had 
occasion to see a remarkably helpful and informative error message from the 
Python installer. We were trying (unsuccessfully) to debug a new Windows 
2000 administrative "Operational Unit" (essentially a "light" domain). Our 
permissions were set wrong, so when we tried to install some applications 
we got cryptic messages and the installs failed. But when we tried to 
install Python we were told that we didn't have adequate permissions to 
modify the registry, and would we like to install in a way that didn't 
require modifying the registry, even though some things might not work 
quite properly. We had suspected lack of write-access to the registry, but 
it was only the Python installer that confirmed this, in detail. Nice job!