[Idle-dev] Windows Helpfiles

[Bruce Sherwood]

From: "Kurt B. Kaiser" <kbk@shore.net>
> Bruce, to answer your earlier question, the .idlerc directory is
> created in the user's home directory on Linux, and currently at c:\ in
> Windows.  It contains all the customizations that the user has made
> using the Settings dialog (and also his breakpoints).  So it would be
> easy for you to set up a machine the way you want it and then
> propagate the .idlerc (possibly deleting the breakpoints.lst and
> recent-files.lst) to your students.  With a little scripting, you
> could also switch .idlerc files on the fly for your demonstrations
> (e.g. use different font sizes).  The Extra Help locations live in the
> [Help Files] section of .idlerc/config-main.cfg, so they will also be
> propagated.  You could even propagate daily so the Extra Help would
> contain the day's Lab Instructions and the Recent Files List contains
> the day's examples.
>
> Anything not customized uses the defaults in the .def files.

Very interesting. Thanks for the feature and the explanation.

Minor correction: I find experimentally on Windows that the .idlerc folder
is not at c:\ but rather (correctly) in the individual user's "Documents and
Settings" (at least on modern versions of Windows). That means that users
should be able to do their own configuring even on machines where they're
locked out of much of the hard disk.

Bruce Sherwood