[Python-Dev] Non-Core project: IDLE

[Mark Summerfield]

On 2009-03-23, Guilherme Polo wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> > Guilherme Polo wrote:
> >> On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 8:53 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> >>> IDLE needs lots of attention -- more than any one experienced person is
> >>> likely to have
> >>
> >> I'm willing to step up as a student for this but I still have to write
> >> a good proposal for it.
> >> My actual concern is about mentor availability, is someone around
> >> interested on being an IDLE mentor ?
> >
> > If I could, I would, and would have said so.  But I have only read about
> > tk and have not actually used it.  If I did decide to dive into it, you'd
> > be mentoring me ;-).  What I can and would do is give ideas for changes,
> > read and comment on a proposal, and user test patched versions.
>
> That is very nice Terry. Do you have some specific ideas that you want
> to share publicly (or in private) about IDLE ? Your expectations about
> what should be addressed first, or areas that should be improved.. you
> know, anything.

I have one suggestion that I think might be widely appreciated:

Add somewhere in the configuration dialog when users can enter a block
of Python code to be executed at startup and whenever Restart Shell is
executed.

Use case: for people who use IDLE for calculations/experiments they
might like to always have certain module imported. For me personally, it
would be:

    import os
    import re
    import sys
    from math import *

but of course the whole point is that people can write any code they
like. (Some people might want to do various from __future__ imports in
Python 2.6 to get various Python 3 features for example.)

I know that you can use the -c option, but that only works at startup,
not every time you Restart Shell.

[snip]

-- 
Mark Summerfield, Qtrac Ltd, www.qtrac.eu
    C++, Python, Qt, PyQt - training and consultancy
        "Rapid GUI Programming with Python and Qt" - ISBN 0132354187