[Pythonmac-SIG] a beginner's list

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 8, 2006, at 7:40 PM, Charles Hartman wrote:

>
> Well, so PythonIDE is dead. (It hasn't been well for a long time.)
>
> How ready-for-prime-time is IDLE? What drawbacks are there to
> recommending it to beginners? What can't you do? Do I remember that
> it uses TKinter? Does it make wx impossible to use? I haven't used
> it, so I'm asking out of ignorance, not simply rhetorically.

IDLE does use tkinter.

Being a Tk based UI it will not follow Mac conventions and its going  
to act a little quirky

Since IDLE runs its shells and scripts in subprocesses, wx (or any  
other GUI framework) is possible to use if and only if IDLE was  
started via "pythonw".  If IDLE is started with just "python" then wx  
will not operate.  I believe the Tk that ships with OS X 10.4 does  
have the CPS hack that allows it to work even if started with python,  
but that doesn't help wx at all.

-bob