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

[David Scherer]

[Stephen M. Gava writes]
> As for 
> help documentation: if pressing the "F1" (or configured help) 
> key is to 
> retain it's sensible common meaning of "help on using this 
> application" then 
> I believe it should by default pop up help on using idle 
> itself (and the 
> python documentation could be on shift-F1 for instance)

I disagree.  

The purpose of help is not to provide information on an application; the
purpose of help is to provide the user *help* with their current task.
The current task of an IDLE user is "writing a Python program."  In
support of this task, they need to, among other things,

  1. Edit their program text using the editor
  2. Write a syntactically correct Python program
  3. Make use of standard python libraries
  4. Make use of other python libraries they have installed

They should therefore have access to help for all these things.  There's
no particular reason that (1) should be separated from the others.

[Fred L. Drake writes]
>   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.

I like this idea, although it might be a lot of work.  A dynamically
expandable Python help system would be useful beyond IDLE, as well.  It
does feel a little like feeping creaturism, though.  (Why not update the
documentation automatically from the web when a network connection is
available?  Why not integrate it with a directory of Python packages, so
that you can look at the help for a module you don't have installed, and
click to download and install it?)

Dave