Best Free and Open Source Python IDE

[Kirk Sluder]

In article <6fd78$45ccd1c1$d443bb3a$15713 at news.speedlinq.nl>,
 Stef Mientki <S.Mientki-nospam at mailbox.kun.nl> wrote:

> Which brings me to some other questions on waste:
> - isn't it a pitty so many people are involved in writing another editor / 
> IDE ?

I don't know about that.  Most of the new editor development appears 
to involve one of the following:

1: Taking advantage of a specific graphical toolkit or interface, 
such as  KDE, Gnome, Cocoa, MS Foundation, SWING, and terminals. 

2: Building around a specific language for macro and script 
programming.  

3: Adding features that are useful for specific development models. 
Web/HTML authoring requires upload tools, C/C++ requires make, Java 
might use Ant, lisp and python can use shells.  

> - isn't it a waste for newbies to evaluate a dozen editors / IDE's ?

I think that in many cases, the choices are constrained to two or 
three depending on what the _newbie_ wants to do, and what Desktop 
Environment they use.  For general editors on OS X, I'd suggest 
Smultron, or TextWrangler.  For KDE, kick the tires on Kate a bit.  
Cross-platform and portable? jEdit.  Text consoles? Emacs, vim or 
jed.

And if the newbie has some specific itch that needs to be scratched, 
there again the choices usually boil down to two or three best of 
breed IDEs, many of which are segregated by platform.  

 > just some thoughts,
> of a some months old newbie,
> Stef Mientki