[Pythonmac-SIG] IDLE and MacPython 2.5

[Jacob Rus]

Christopher Barker wrote:
> Jacob Rus wrote:
>> Admittedly, the python bundle is not as polished
>> as those for some other languages (html and ruby for instance), but it
>> is still head and shoulders above all the other editors listed above, in
>> my opinion.  some more people from this list ought to give it a shot
>> (the python bundle really needs some more competent contributors to live
>> up to its potential,
> 
> Can the Python mode be altered/improved by users? Is TextMate open to 
> input/contribution from users?

Yes indeed, which is why I say it needs to have more contributors from 
the Mac Python community.  There are several dozen active contributors 
to the bundle repository (only a few python users though), and the 
community seems in general to be quite energetic and active.

Allan tosses new features to bundle contributors every few weeks (last 
week it was the quite impressive new tm_dialog tool, which allows a 
command to use interface builder .nib files as a dialog, sending the 
result back to the command as a plist file), and those features ripple 
down through the bundles as people build new toys to take advantage of them.

Anyway, the primary places where the current TextMate python bundle can 
be improved are a) a better python script runner, with prettier styled 
output, and more linkified tracebacks, b) better documentation of the 
bundle, and better tools for fetching documentation about the functions 
and classes being used. and c) more snippets and commands for code-entry 
can be added.  Snippets a very powerful tool, and the python bundle 
under-utilizes them at the moment.

> That is what it takes to really make it 
> shine. A couple years ago a BBedit user posted excerpts from an email 
> discussion with the BBedit folks about how they might improve BBEdit for 
> Python -- and it came down to the BBedit folks saying : you shouldn't 
> want to do that, and we're not going to let you -- it was clear none of 
> them was a regular Python user, so BBedit's Python support is still 
> severely lacking.

That is very sad.  TextMate, and its community certainly do not share 
this philosophy.  The TextMate support for python is already 
significantly better than BBEdit's support.  But it's not as good as it 
could be, either.

> The primary reason I use Xemacs is because it has excellent modes for 
> EVERY kind of text I edit -- and ALL of them were written by serious 
> users of the respective type of text -- that's why they are so good 
> (didn't Guido write the original Python mode for Emacs?)

Well, personally, as a Mac user, I think that a python bundle that fully 
took advantage of TextMate would be nicer than the emacs python mode. 
But it will take a non-trivial amount of work.  One of the problems with 
the current TextMate is that grammars and folding patterns, etc. are 
rather geared toward working with end markers on blocks, and don't 
really handle indentation-based structure as well as I would like.  But 
I think those problems will go away in TextMate 2.0, which should come 
out sometime after Leopard does (when I'm hoping python 2.5 and pyObjC 
will be shipped standard with the OS??).

TextMate's scope system is based around a quite understandable, and 
extremely flexible, regular-expression-based lexer/parser, and though it 
makes a few compromises in the name of efficiency (Text Editors have 
different needs than compilers and interpreters, naturally), it stands 
head and shoulders above any other editor when it comes to scoping all 
the elements of a language, and allowing granular context-sensitive 
control of the editor's behavior.  I really think all powerful editors 
will work this way in 10 years, as it's too useful a feature for others 
to ignore for long.

> I'm still looking for an editor/IDE that supports everything I do, and 
> works on all three platforms I need it on

Well, it doesn't work on Windows or Linux, but on the Mac, in my opinion 
TextMate is the nicest editor around.  There are quite a few emacs/vim 
converts in the community, who seem to be happily adjusted.

I think at the very least, every Mac user who deals with any significant 
amount of structured text or code owes it to themselves to download the 
30-day trial.  I estimate within 2 weeks, you'll be hooked ;)

-Jacob