I envy newbies

[Tim Peters]

[Ivan Van Laningham, making an IDLE desktop shortcut under Windows]
> ...
> (I quote from _Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours_ (forthcoming from
> SAMS)):

Monday <wink>?

> ``The first thing you need to do is to find where IDLE lives, and to do
> that you need to know where Python lives;
> [instructions for navigating the directory tree in Explorer until
>  finding idle.pyw]

Try this:  Start -> Programs -> Python 1.5 then rightclick+drag the IDLE
entry to the desktop.  Everything else:

> Right click ... and select "Create Shortcut" on the popup menu ...

is the same, but this avoids any mucking with Explorer.  Could be you need
the Active Desktop enabled for this to work (but it's your book, so I'm not
going to take the time to disable the Active Desktop to check that out for
you <wink>).

> The installer does modify your autoexec.bat to include the Python path
> on W95/98.

Eh?  It never touched autoexec.bat on my Win95 -- and darned glad it didn't.
That's a dangerous thing for any installer to presume to do.

The good news is that new users introduced via IDLE have no immediate need
to worry about the DOS path -- the IDLE shortcut knows how to invoke Python
regardless.  In fact, I've been known to use Python from time to time
<wink>, and

C:\temp>python
Bad command or file name

C:\temp>

That is, I still haven't bothered to put python.exe on my PATH!  Although I
do have an MS-DOS desktop shortcut with D:\PYTHON as its working directory
and "doskey /INSERT" as its "batch file".

can-just-feel-the-linux-folks-melting-with-jealousy<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim