IDLE and Hooks in apps for usage of My Favorite Editor

[Boudewijn Rempt]

Jeff Blaine <jblaine at shell2.shore.net> wrote:
> Am I the only one who chooses specifically not to use IDEs (IDLE included)
> because they don't allow you to edit files with your editor of preference?

> Am I the only one on the planet who thinks allowing a programmer to use
> his/her editor of choice in applications is VERY important?

> I've seen _one_ application (TkRat, an IMAP client done in Tcl/Tk) in a
> long long time that allows calling an external editor.

> Is this a difficult task which I just don't understand the complexities of?

No, it isn't difficult to teach Idle to use another editor. At least,
what I did was to rip the most useful part out of it (the path/class
browser), make it stand-alone and have it open my editor of choice.
Hardcoded for now, though the documentation tells you where to change
it to your editor of choice... It took all of four hours to do that.

I'm currently trying to determine what the neatest way is of having
global preferences filter down to small objects - i.e. I want people
to be able to set their editor of choice, and when they doubleclick
on an leaf in the tree, make it open that editor. I can't figure out
anything but making a config object and passing that to all created
leaf objects, and that somehow doesn't seem neat to me.

Oh, my version of the classbrowser-that-opens-my-preferred-editor
is at http://www.valdyas.org/python/kpybrowser.html. It only works
with KDE, since that's my preferred development environment. There
are a few bugs, but it works well enough to use daily.

-- 

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.valdyas.org