2.7 beta 1

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:34:50 -0700, Joaquin Abian wrote:

> On Apr 11, 6:53 pm, Steven D'Aprano <st... at REMOVE-THIS-
> cybersource.com.au> wrote:
>>
>> In any case, IDLE is one IDE out of many, and not really up to
>> professional quality -- it's clunky and ugly. It isn't Python, it is a
>> tool written in Python.
>>
>> --
>> Steven
> 
> But this is a tool that is a part of the python distribution and often
> recommended to python beginners as their first IDE. So IDLE is
> responsible for the first impression on Python to many. If IDLE is
> considered as of low quality and ugly, after so many years, why it is
> not fixed or replaced?.
> I'm just wondering.

Which toolset should the IDE target? Native Windows? QT? Gnome? Cocoa? 
Something else? That will require a widget library. How many widget 
libraries should Python ship with? Two? Three? Five? Which ones? 
wxPython? PythonCard? Something else? They tend to be very large. Do the 
Python developers then become responsible for fixing bugs in the widget 
libraries?

Python ships with, at most, a single GUI toolset, tkinter, which targets 
the Tcl/Tk toolkit. Consider it the lowest common denominator of modern 
GUIs, although I hear that Tk now supports native widgets. But that still 
requires work. See here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/349409/why-are-tk-guis-considered-ugly

But what it really comes down to is time and effort. GUI design is hard, 
and unless somebody volunteers to make IDLE look and feel better, it 
isn't going to just upgrade itself.


-- 
Steven