[Idle-dev] IDLEfork / Docs / Startup etc.

Fred L. Drake, Jr. fdrake@acm.org
Wed, 10 Oct 2001 00:54:55 -0400


 > IDLE most definitely isn't an "application" in the technical sense; it's
 > not an executable binary.

  I'm not sure this is a useful definition of "application".  Heck,
not all executables are binary, even in the Windows world; think batch
files and Windows Scripting Host scripts.

Stephen M. Gava writes:
 > Anyway the bottom line really is that anyone who wants to standardise on 
 > different behaviour will be able to easily via the default config files if 
 > they wish.

  A quick experiment with MSVC++ 6 shows that if focus is in a source
window, F1 brings up the installed MSDN library (think
"\Python21\Doc\index.html"), while if focus is in the output or
file/class view windows (including their docked incarnations),
information specific to those views comes up.
  I'd interpret this as context specific help taking precedence, with
user-installed help overriding the general application help.  I don't
know that it tells us a lot, but I think it does hint that what's
needed is a general "front page" to the help, with everything
interesting falling somewhere inside that corpus.
  Perhaps the right thing would be to go ahead with a registration for
help components, and re-generate the front page when new components
are added.


  -Fred

-- 
Fred L. Drake, Jr.  <fdrake at acm.org>
PythonLabs at Zope Corporation