[Python-Dev] A kind of configuration question

[Guido van Rossum]

> On a related note, has anything happened on my other bug report (406280)? At
> the very least, using tempfilepager instead of pipepager as a workaround
> would be sensible. Leaving things broken makes no real sense. This is a
> patch:

What's broken?  After "from pydoc import help" I can use help(...)
just fine, both in the command line version (where it invokes some
pager) and in IDLE (where it just scrolls off the window, but IDLE has
infinite scroll-back so that's no problem).  This is on Win98se with
Python 2.1b2.
 
> Given that Windows NT/2000 command line shells are fine, and reasonably
> capable (including command history both at the prompt and within
> applications, whatever size you like, and scrolling buffers), refusing to
> support them just because 9x (which frankly is a dying environment for
> developers) is pathetic, is not a very helpful stance to take. I've supplied
> two low-impact patches which make pydoc work on the Windows NT command line.
> Sure, I can apply them manually to my installation, but why not make them
> available to everyone?

We seem to disagree on how Windows users use their system.  You seem
to be a command line user on Windows.  Both Tim & me are more
mouse-based users, and neither of us spends a lot of time in the
command line, so we don't see the point of adding yet another thing to
the distribution.  It is my expectation that *most* Windows users (and
developers) are like Tim & me, not like you, so we don't feel (if I
may channel Tim for a change :-) that this would benefit most users.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)