[Idle-dev] /me waves

Simon Forman forman.simon at gmail.com
Fri Mar 22 19:23:29 CET 2013


On 3/22/13, Katie Cunningham <katie.fulton at gmail.com> 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!
>
> 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.
>
> 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?'
>


In the my-two-cents dept.  I've used IDLE professionally for about a
decade.  It has it's warts and bugs but it beats e.g. Eclipse for my
purposes.  However...

One of the biggest things you (meaning me) get used to is the fact
that the "shell" is just a thin layer over a Tk Text widget, and not a
proper shell at all.  I find when I need "heavy-duty" shell stuff I
drop down to IPython in a real terminal.  There was some idea of
integrating IPython with IDLE at some point but I don't know the
details or history.

Certainly having a more shell-like shell is a very worthy goal in my opinion. :)

What I'd really like to see though (and would be able to contribute
to) would be making the internals of IDLE into more of an educational,
uh, project.  What I mean is, wouldn't it be great if we could use
IDLE itself to learn about writing good Python programs?  It's the
sort of project that many budding hackers cut teeth on: a text editor
with programming support.

Not only could IDLE serve as a model code project, but this would make
it easier to modify and play with the way it works.

Warm regards all,
~Simon


-- 

"The history of mankind for the last four centuries is rather like that of
an imprisoned sleeper, stirring clumsily and uneasily while the prison that
restrains and shelters him catches fire, not waking but incorporating the
crackling and warmth of the fire with ancient and incongruous dreams, than
like that of a man consciously awake to danger and opportunity."
--H. P. Wells, "A Short History of the World"


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