[Idle-dev] IDLE-Spoon

[Tal Einat]

Hi,

I'd like to announce the revival of the IDLE-Spoon project!

IDLE-Spoon is now hosted at BitBucket:
http://bitbucket.org/taleinat/idle-spoon/

This means that downloading, being notified of changes, reporting bugs
and suggesting features are all very easy to do, not to mention
forking the code yourself for some hacking.

My hope is that some people who use IDLE regularly will adopt
IDLE-Spoon and help report bugs and suggest improvements. This will
allow submitting well-tested patches back to main-stream IDLE.

== New Features ==
* compatible with Python versions 2.3 to 2.6 (should work with 2.7
too, untested)
* enhanced search mechanism with incremental search
* out-of-the-box inclusion of the Squeezer extension (with improvements)
* case-insensitive auto-completion
* configuration dialog for extensions
* call-tips allow opening a function/method/class's argument list and
doc-string in a separate viewing window

== What is IDLE-Spoon? ==
IDLE-spoon aims to revive the development of IDLE, which has been
stagnant in recent years. The main goals are to fix usability issues,
to improve friendliness and ease of use, and to add key productivity
enhancing features. These will be done only in ways which will not
compromise IDLE's simplicity and clean interface, so that it will
continue to be useful for learning and teaching.

Additionally, compatibility with Python versions 2.3 and above is
maintained. IDLE-spoon is currently not compatible with Python3.0.

Another major reason for forking from the main version is to allow a
faster commit process, which will hopefully allow a wider user-base to
test new features and provide feedback.

== Important Notes ==
* the latest version has only been tested by myself
* IDLE-Spoon does not yet work with Python 3