[Python-Dev] A kind of configuration question

[Tim Peters]

[Moore, Paul]
> There's an issue on Windows, because there are two types of executable
> (console and GUI). I've raised a bug report on this (407300), but
> the action taken was to remove the pydoc script (as opposed to the
> module) from the Windows installer, although there is still a start
> menu entry.

Paul, that action had nothing to do with your bug report.  Ping managed to
break AMK's pydoc script on Windows the morning of 2.1b2 release day, and
that left the Windows installer installing a non-functional Start menu link
for pydoc.  Unfortunately, I didn't discover that until after the 2.1b2 code
base was frozen.  Fortunately, Ping had also checked in a new pydoc.pyw
script (under Tools/scripts/) that *did* work on Windows, so *after* the last
second I simply changed the Start menu link to point to that instead, and
stopped copying AMK's no-longer-worked-on-Windows Tools/scripts/pydoc script
to the installation directory.  And I don't know why Guido copied AMK's pydoc
script to the Windows install directory to begin with, since (as your bug
report pointed out) it was a nearly useless thing on Windows even before it
got broken.

> ...
> The other thing is to support the command line usage "pydoc XXX".

Given that Win9x systems come with feeble cmdline shells (they're 50 lines
max, and no way to scroll back), I have no interest in pretending to support
pydoc's cmdline usage under Windows DOS boxes.  Writing a cmdline script to
drive pydoc is a trivial exercise for any knowledgable Windows user who wants
that, while the non-knowledgable should learn to use pydoc from within IDLE
or PythonWin or PythonWorks or ... instead (all of which provide a *capable*
Python shell under all flavors of Windows).