[Tutor] Re: [Edu-sig] RE: [Idle-dev] IDLE's save-before-run r equirement

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

> What would switching over to using Scintilla accomplish that 
> sticking with IDLE and continuing it's development wouldn't?

In a word "Reuse". That means one editor to maintain for most 
of the Python IDEs. Add a feature to Scintilla and its pretty 
trivial for all the IDEs to pick up the new feature without 
having to reimplemnent it from scratch. Effort gets concentrated 
on the value add bits rather than the nitty gritty of text editing.

At least that's the theory... In practice writing reusable 
solutions gets exponentially harder with the number of clients.
Thus trying to please multiple consumers might just wind up
stifleing the development of Scintilla!

Personally my favourite approach to IDEs is that taken by 
the old HP Unix product - provide a configurable framework and 
let the user select their own editor/compiler/interpreter/debugger
etc. The downside of this is that it restricts how much integration 
you can really have to how well integrated the selected tools are.
GNOME etc should make this approach more viable long term. 

Alan G