[Python-ideas] Non-English names in the turtle module.

[Nick Coghlan]

On 5 September 2015 at 07:43, Al Sweigart <asweigart at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see your point. I think there are two different arguments here: It would
> be good to have non-English turtle modules of PyPI for older versions of
> Python. But it would also be good to have non-English names added to the
> turtle module in the 3.6 stdlib.
>
> My main concern was that if these modules were on PyPI, they would be left
> out of the standard library. Then the "install from PyPI headache" arguments
> would apply.

The last major upgrade to turtle was the adoption of Gregor Lindl's
xturtle for 2.6 as the standard turtle implementation, and he iterated
on that as an external project for a while first. I think this is
another case where a similar approach would work well - you could
create a new "eduturtle" project as a fork of the current turtle
module to allow more rapid iteration and feedback from educators
unconstrained by the standard library's release cycle, and then
propose it for default inclusion in 3.6.

Another potentially desirable thing that could be explored within such
a "turtle upgrade" project is switching it to using a HTML5 canvas as
its drawing surface, rather than relying on Tkinter. We made a similar
change a while ago with PyDoc, and while the pages generated by the
local web service could definitely use some TLC from a front-end
designer, I think it was a good call.

That "HTML5-compatible-browser-as-GUI-framework" model is also the way
IPython Notebook went for data analysis, and it unlocks an incredibly
rich world of visualisation capabilities, that are not only useful in
full browsers, but also in HTML widgets in desktop and mobile GUI
frameworks.

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia