[Tutor] Re: clear screen [Let's make a feature request in Sou rceforge!]

[alan.gauld@bt.com]

> >primitive user interfaces that we know are evil and crude, 
> Somehow, I feel the bad old platform dependent
> os.system('cls') or os.system('clear') is better.

I'm with Magnus here. I think its important for newbie 
programmers to learn, quite early that platform issues 
make a difference and that you shouldn't assume that your 
users terminal will work the same as yours - even on the 
same OS. Thats why the os.name tests are spurious. 
I could be working on Linux via a teletype, in which case 
clear() won't do anything - but thats OK I guess... or 
I could be working on some exotic OS that runs multiple 
terminal sessions on one console, interleaved with each 
other(mainframe operations people know what I mean! :-)

Clearing the screen with 24 new lines would be incredibly 
unfriendly since it would ose the interleaved data from 
the other sessions!

Better to learn the hard way that some things are not to 
be taken for granted. If you need to know ask the user
about their environment(through a config program maybe)
or use the OS (termcap etc) to see whats possible.

> Perhaps we will have a big gap here until someone
> creates something like Delphi or Visual Basic for
> Python.

<rant>
I love Delphi, but I think these IDEs steer beginners 
in lots of bad directions, not least in assuming that 
the world is a GUI place. Of course being pragmatic 
most of us do live in GUI land, but being able to lash 
a GUI screen together does not a programmer make and 
VB/Delphi put the focus on GUI design rather than program 
design - a bad thing IMHO.
</rant>

Alan g.
Author of the 'Learning to Program' web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld