[IPython-dev] Curses Frontend Update

[Fernando Perez]

Hi Wendell,

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 5:55 AM, Wendell Smith <wackywendell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I have been busy coding away, trying to get two prototypes written for
> the eventual curses frontend.
>
> They are EXTREMELY basic - they don't even interpret code, just spit it
> back out (although in the right place and correctly colored). They are
> full of bugs, don't resize well, etc. - but, well, they are prototypes.
>
> What they do:
> They both have 3 windows: completions, output, and input. The
> completions window shows some default text, the input window accepts
> text input, and after hitting enter or <ctrl-g>, the entered code is
> highlighted and displayed in the output window.
>
> I wrote these both mainly to compare urwid and curses, which I think
> they do fairly well. the urwid library is quite nice, and although
> documentation is not perfect, it is good, and the whole thing provides
> far more than curses - curses requires you to manually handle resizing,
> for example. The code for the urwid part is therefore far simpler, and
> was written much faster. It of course requires urwid (easy_install
> urwid), and both require pygments (also available with easy_install).
> Urwid is much nicer... but development is only semi-active, and they
> don't seem at all prepared to port to python3, which is of course important.
>
> Anyways, please download the code, run the prototypes, tell me what you
> think!
>
> Code is on github here:
> git://github.com/wackywendell/ipyurwid.git
> git://github.com/wackywendell/ipycurses.git

Great!  A few comments:

- On ubuntu 9.10, I get this for the urwid code:

(master)amirbar[ipyurwid]> python interpreterwidget.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "interpreterwidget.py", line 112, in <module>
    interp = fakeinterpreter(mainwin)
  File "interpreterwidget.py", line 81, in __init__
    self.formatter = UrwidFormatter(style=s)
  File "/home/fperez/ipython/wendell/ipyurwid/urwidpygments.py", line
29, in __init__
    self._setup_styles(colors)
  File "/home/fperez/ipython/wendell/ipyurwid/urwidpygments.py", line
92, in _setup_styles
    fgcolstr, bgcolstr, othersettings, colors)
  File "/home/fperez/ipython/wendell/ipyurwid/urwidpygments.py", line
72, in findclosestattr
    fg = self.findclosest(fgcolstr, colors)
  File "/home/fperez/ipython/wendell/ipyurwid/urwidpygments.py", line
54, in findclosest
    bestcol = urwid.AttrSpec('h0','default')
AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'AttrSpec'

I have:

In [2]: urwid.__version__
Out[2]: '0.9.8.4'

Do I need a newer urwid to test out?

Still, this is a tough one: I am genuinely worried about depending on
a possibly undeveloped project. Have you contacted the urwid devs to
find out a little bit about future plans/py3 development ideas?

Using curses when urwid is around may feel painful, but at this point
closing the door on py3k development possibilities sounds a little
dangerous for us.  On the other hand, I do see the differences:

amirbar[wendell]> wc -l ipyurwid/*py
  117 ipyurwid/interpreterwidget.py
  252 ipyurwid/palette_test.py
  105 ipyurwid/urwidpygments.py
  474 total

amirbar[wendell]> wc -l ipycurses/*py
  151 ipycurses/basicsequence.py
  142 ipycurses/cursesextras.py
   71 ipycurses/cursesparser.py
  347 ipycurses/cursespygments.py
   32 ipycurses/interpreterwidget.py
   11 ipycurses/ipythontest.py
   18 ipycurses/keytester.py
   57 ipycurses/prototype.py
   66 ipycurses/tester.py
  241 ipycurses/vipad.py
  123 ipycurses/vipadtester.py
 1259 total

Since I can't run the urwid code right now, how equivalent are the two
in terms of functionality? I'm basically trying to gauge if the above
line counts can be fairly compared...

Cheers,

f