[Idle-dev] /me waves

[Kevin Walzer]

On 3/22/13 10:09 AM, Katie Cunningham wrote:
> You'd be surprised re: designers and UX. There's quite a few in the
> Python community, but many assume that they have nothing to give to
> core. I'd love to pull some of them in!

OK, seems like a worthy goal.

This question is motivated by genuine curiosity: what do UX specialists 
do, exactly? What are their skill sets? Do they code, do they prototype 
stuff in Photoshop, etc? What can they contribute to Python development?

My experience with UX specialists/designer is limited to using 
open-source icon sets in my apps, so I don't know much about the work UX 
specialists do, and would like to learn more.

> As for IDLE, some of my problems stem from having a shell-like
> environment that doesn't act like a shell. Up arrow moves my cursor? I
> get history through clicking? Why does the Python shell have dots to
> indicate a block, but IDLE doesn't? Also, parts of the interface don't
> seem to scale well as you change the font size.

"Up arrow moves cursor": that's the expected behavior of the Tk text 
widget on which IDLE is based. I for one would find it very jarring to 
see this behavior changed.

>
> I think we need to step away from a few people that say 'it works for
> me' and ask 'how can we make it work for the community?'

Before we can do that, however, we need to agree on what the problems 
are. You consider the behavior of the up arrow in IDLE a bug; I consider 
it a feature.

Another logistical problem to be aware of: if IDLE is to be kept in the 
core, then any revisions to it must be based on its current UI toolkit, 
Tkinter. IDLE inherits a lot of Tkinter's default behaviors. Changing 
IDLE's GUI library would be an entirely different conversation (one that 
crops up annually on c.l.py, it seems). If you move IDLE outside the 
core or fork it, then you have a lot more freedom to experiment.

Of course, my own preferences may not be representative of everyone's, 
and I'm certainly not going to have sour grapes if a consensus emerges 
to overhaul IDLE in these directions. I always have Emacs to fall back 
on. :-)

--Kevin

-- 
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin/Mobile Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com
http://www.wtmobilesoftware.com