Hi John,
I know you are already in communication/waiting for a bugfix on this, but I have a quick inquiry. This sounds related to issues I've had with my graphics library (now solved, knock on wood). I would think that running IDLE -n would solve this problem for you. Please see my question below:Sorry I was inprecise. In fact, yesterday I didn't know what to look for (it is the 'no subproccess message'). What I meant with 'exactly the same result' was that IDLE hangs after I closed the figure window.
Hans Fangohr wrote:
Dear all,
I am about to teach Python to a number of students who already know how to use Matlab (on a basic level). For that reason, the matplotlib library for plotting curves is ideally suited (it seems quite good anyway).
The teaching computers are Win XP machines. I have settled for the Enthough Python Edition and the latest matplotlib (both executables can be found in www.soton.ac.uk/~fangohr/download/python).
I have prepared the exercises on linux and am now trying to run them in windows. This is where I realised that matplotlib doesn't work well with IDLE.
More particularly, it is known that the default backend TkAgg doesn't work with IDLE (see here http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/backends.html#TkAgg)
but it appears to work with "IDLE -n" (this is what it says on that web page).
The problem I experience is this:
-start idle -execute these commands:
import pylab pylab.plot(range(10)) pylab.show()
This produces a figure window which seems to work fine.
At this point when closing the figure window, I can't get the IDLE prompt active again. (It seems that IDLE thinks the program and the figure process are still running, and is waiting for control to return.)
This, in itself, is maybe not suprising. However, the idle -n switch doesn't seem to solve the problem for me (see below).
The same problem is observed when I execute a program in the IDLE editor (by pressing F5).
What do people think how I should continue?
I could
- try to make IDLE work with matplotlib (I think this is my preferred option)
In that case, how do I tell IDLE on Windows to start with -n? (Not a
Windows freak). In the start menu, I can change the properties for the
link to idle from '''
C:\Python23\pythonw.exe "C:\Python23\Lib\idlelib\idle.pyw"
C:\Python23\pythonw.exe "C:\Python23\Lib\idlelib\idle.pyw" "-n"
but this doesn't seem to solve the problem: I get exactly the same behaviour as described above.
When you say you get exactly the same result, does this mean that IDLE's behavior is unchanged?
I can now confirm that the syntax I used above, i.e.
C:\Python23\pythonw.exe "C:\Python23\Lib\idlelib\idle.pyw" "-n"
is correct to start Python with no subprocesses.
If so, you are not getting the -n flag set. IDLE should fire up with a message that simply says "no subprocess" instead of the warning about personal firewalls. If you just mean that Matplotlib acts the same, that's a different story. What happens if you change the menu item to this:This, by the way, results in a 'program not found error' presumably because pythonw is looking for a program of name "C:\Python23\Lib\idlelib\idle.pyw -n".
C:\Python23\pythonw.exe "C:\Python23\Lib\idlelib\idle.pyw -n"
Unfortunately, I don't have access to Windows to try this out at the moment. Another way to fire up IDLE in the -n mode is to right-click on a Python file and then select "edit with IDLE." I actually find it annoying that opening IDLE this way puts it in -n mode, but it might be a way to test out exactly what's happening.
That's useful information for me, thanks.
To complete the story: the matplotlib people (John Hunter and Todd Miller) have been very helpful. They suggested to uncomment this line
#os.environ['PYTHONINSPECT'] = '1'
in the show method of site-packages/matplotlib/backends/backend_tkagg.py, and to use the interactive mode (i.e. set interactive=True in share/matplotlib/.matplotlibrc). Having done that, all works well when IDLE is started with the -n flag. (which -- as it happens seems to be identical to rightclick on a Python file and select 'edit with idle'.)
Hope this is useful,
Hans
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------------------------------------------------- Dr Hans Fangohr
Computational Engineering & Design Research Group School of Engineering Sciences University of Southampton Southampton, SO17 1BJ United Kingdom
Location: Building 25, Room 1027 phone : +44 (0) 23 8059 8345 fax : +44 (0) 23 8059 7082 email : [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------------------------------
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