[Idle-dev] The Future of Python

[Terry Reedy]

On 2/10/2014 6:07 PM, Glyph wrote:

> And let me make a halfhearted attempt to bring this on-topic: it would
> be absolutely /amazing/ if IDLE actually had a plugin to allow you to
> write some HTML and some CSS and stuff so that new users could easily
> get up and running with something that looks "real" to modern students
> (i.e. a web page that they can share, not just some turtle graphics on a
> canvas).

I need more information to know what you are suggesting.

What do you see as the relation between Python and html that Idle should 
be html aware rather than C aware?  Why should one edit html in Idle 
rather that in one of the many Html Editor programs?  What would be 
Idle's competitive advantage in a crowded field? Is this idea predicated 
on having a means to run a subset of Python 3 in a browser?

Note 1: it would be trivial to have Idle recognize .xyz files, but it is 
currently a python-specific and non-python general text editor.
Note 2: I presume, but do not know, that an extension could effectively 
subclass EditorWindow and override some of the methods.

One can edit html now in an editor window as plain text. What additional 
behaviors would you add if Idle recognized .html?  Syntax highlight 
embedded Python (as already requested on the tracker)?  Syntax highlight 
html constructs (which would require an html parser)?  'Run' the file 
(F5) in a browser rather than in a shell?  (The existing webbrowser 
module would make this easy.)

What would be 'amazing' is a way to have a form displayed in either by 
python (tkinter) or a browser, or drawings and even animation displayed 
on either a tkinter Canvas or the HTML5 equivalent.

Note 3: Idle was intended to be open and extendable. It is, but... 
enabling and configuring an extension currently means editing the 
appropriate section of the extension configuration file (as opposed to 
the core configuration file) and running the risk of munging the file in 
way that stops Idle from starting. Five years ago, Tal Einat opened an 
issue and submitted a patch to add a extension configuration dialog to 
accompany the current core configuration dialog. Two weeks ago, he got 
my attention, convinced my that this is a good idea, and just submitted 
an updated patch. This should make 3rd party extensions easier to use.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy