[Idle-dev] Intentions?

[David Scherer]

> Idlefork has this much more reasonable behavior:
> 
>     idle.py file
> 
> opens an editing window on file and nothing else.
> 
> But there's another thing I'd like to see: if you open 
> several files this way, they all end up running separate 
> copies of IDLE.  A little bit of Windows-specific magic 
> should be added to make this attach to an already-running 
> IDLE copy.  But I don't know how to do that yet. :-)

Idlefork *does* do this, unless someone has changed it since I set up
the project.

C:\Python21>pythonw.exe Tools\idle_VPython\idle.py a.py
C:\Python21>pythonw.exe Tools\idle_VPython\idle.py b.py

creates exactly two IDLE editor windows and exactly one copy of
pythonw.exe is running.  The magic isn't even really windows-specific;
it uses the same TCP server as ExecBinding.  It probably causes havoc on
a multi-user machine, though.

By the way, it would be *very* nice if someone could put the Windows
file-extension bindings into an installer program.  Personally I think
opening IDLE is a much better and safer default behavior than running
python on a script, but at the very least it should be on the
right-click menu as Patrick describes.

Dave