[Tutor] Re: [Edu-sig] RE: [Idle-dev] IDLE's save-before-run r equirement

[Tim Peters]

Wow -- this has a giant distribution list!  I'll play along <wink>.

[Mark Hammond]
> Pythonwin does use scintilla for its console.  You are correct that it
> is not integrated with the editor as tightly as IDLE.  This is mainly
> doe to the fact pythonwin uses "... " as a secondary prompt, and also
> complications with the scintilla lexer.

FWIW, I wish IDLE used "... " too -- switching between a DOS-box Python and
IDLE is jarring.  In addition, the IDLE shell uses hard tab characters stuck
at 8-space indents (the latter is a limitation of the Tk Text widget), while
all the other edit windows use no hard tab characters and 4-space indents.
So in a *typical* IDLE session (where I've also got a DOS-box Python
running), I'm dealing with three distinct code presentations.  I can't say
it's a physical burden <wink>, but somehow or other it is tiring!

> I agree that there would be significant work to get auto-indent
> and lexing working correctly using scintilla as the console window.

Worth shooting for, though:  *that* uniformity between shell and edit buffer
is very nice to have.

> As a "meta comment", over 12 months ago I added a feature to Pythonwin
> so that new IDLE extensions could be used directly by both Pythonwin
> and IDLE.  In that time, not a single extra extension has been added
> (that I saw) and IDLE changed its extension loading mechanism.
>
> So while these things all sound good in theory, the reality is that
> people need to actually _do_ it rather than speculate about how others
> could do it.

I'm not sure, Mark, but you and I may be the only two people in the History
of the Universe to actively cooperate on sharing code between two GUI
systems (the auto-indent system shared by PythonWin and IDLE).  It wasn't
that painful, but I recall being utterly unable to get anyone else
interested in playing with us at the time.  Since then, IDLE has stagnated
but remained useful, while you've gone on to fame and riches.  See?  There's
no payback to cooperation <wink>.