[Python-ideas] Cleaner separation of help() and interactive help.

[Steven D'Aprano]

Greg Ewing wrote:
> Ron Adam wrote:
> 
>> It also can be annoying (to me) when I use help and the result is 
>> cleared after the pager is done with it.
> 
> Yeah, that annoys me too. I can't imagine why anyone thought it was
> a good idea to design a pager that way. Come to think of it, the
> whole concept of a pager is something of an anti-feature nowadays,
> when most people's "terminal" is really a gui window with its own
> scrolling facilities that are considerably better than the pager's.

Do you have a reliable source for that claim about "most" people that is 
relevant to Python coders? We're not all using Microsoft VisualStudio :)

This is open source, and people scratch their own itch. I daresay help() 
was written to suit the working processes of the creator. That suits me 
fine, because I like help() just the way it is, I like the pager just 
the way it is, and I don't want it to change. So -1 on any change to the 
default behaviour.


> What I'd really like is for interactive help output to appear in
> a new window, preferably using by favourite text editor so I can
> use its searching facilities, which are also considerably better
> than the pager's.

Personally, I hate it when applications decide to launch additional 
applications without an explicit request.

What you're describing *is* a pager. The default pager is the (almost) 
lowest common denominator which should work for anyone anywhere. 
(Possibly not if they're using a teletype.) Perhaps help() should come 
with some more pagers and an easy interface for setting which one is used.



-- 
Steven