[Tutor] IDLE vs PythonWin

[Alan Gauld]

"Wayne Watson" <sierra_mtnview at sbcglobal.net> wrote 

> About three weeks ago I decided to give PythonWin a whirl. 
> I believe I've noticed about as many code "wrecks" as with IDLE. 

Really? I haven't had many problems.

> That is, while working repeatedly on a program, 
> the editor got confused about what it had available, 
> usually remnants of previous code. 

The editor or the interactive shell? The editor doesn't really 
display much knowlege of the code. How are you using Pythonwin 
to get that error? Are you importing your module into the shell? 
Or are you using Run with F5?

> I just tried to print a very small program in PWin and it printed 
> five blank pages with a small title on each. 

I've never seen that. Are you sure you didn't have a lot of white 
space under the code or something?

> interactive window being part of the larger window with the 
> program windows, I'm not much in favor of it any more. 

MDI used to be the official Windows style but since XP came 
out SDI has taken over. Pythonwin is still firmly in the MDI camp.
Its very much a matter of taste, although I'm fairly ambivalent.
The Window menu is your friend :-)

> It may be time to move on to another editor or return to IDLE. 

There are so many to choose from, One is sure to suit you :-)
Personally I still prefer 3 separate windows for intensive coding.
1) running vim(or increasingly Scite) for editing
2) running a standard python shell (sometimes PyCrust)
3) an OS prompt for testing.

Alt-Tab and up-arrow for navigating between windows/commands
works for me :-)


-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld