On Tue, Dec 23, 2014, at 10:30 PM, Al Sweigart wrote: > Hello, I'm Al Sweigart. I've joined the idle-dev list, but I can't > seem to post to the list. I made an announcement about the "IDLE > Reimagined" project, but I haven't received it from the list nor has > it appeared in the archive on the web. Are my posts being held in > moderation? Is there someone else I should talk to about the idle- > dev list? > > Thanks for your time,
Hi Al, I think that the reason your second message didn't make it was because it is chock full of html. You may not be aware that posting to the python lists should be done using plain text. At least the second message didn't reference your ad-ridden wikia. Many people have designed Python IDEs. It seems that Scheme coders write their own Scheme, and Python coders write their own IDEs. Lots of editors: https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEditors Lots of IDEs: https://wiki.python.org/moin/IntegratedDevelopmentEnvironments In particular, there are many professional, complex IDEs. I remember sitting through a PyCharm presentation at PyCon. The first question was, essentially, "How do you turn all that stuff off?" IDLE is perfectly usable for "professional" development. I use it with emacs for the C parts and command line for project and version control. It does what I want. (Up to the point where I ran out of time to work on it.) It has its own niche, "non-complex, cross- platform IDEs". It's very important that a cross platform IDE be available out of the box when Python is installed. The interactive interpreter in a shell window doesn't cut it, especially on Windows. I read through your 2011 blog entry. It has a number of good ideas and points out things that need fixing. Some have been. Some of your points are just IDLE idiosyncrasies, like the End key jumping between the ends of the line. I found that useful for selecting lines and changing indentation; you might come to like it. (I see that isn't working in 2.7.3, maybe someone "fixed" it...too bad.) Idiosyncrasy: The Python shell uses readline - the up arrow will move history to the command line. In the IDLE shell, GvR didn't copy that, but the up arrow key moves to the previous lines. If you hit most keys, you get a beep, as you noticed. But if you hit enter, the *whole expression* is copied to the command line, and it can be edited. That's pretty cool. It is explained in the IDLE help, in the **TIPS**/Python Shell section. Once shown, a kid will pick that up in a moment, with a big smile. Saves a lot of typing when frobbing around. I'm entirely in agreement that IDLE should be an IDE for beginners. If you want to re-imagine a beginner's cross-platform Python IDE, go for it. But choose your own name if you are going to really tear it up, please. It's more important to fix the IDLE bugs and make it really solid for beginners on all platforms, IMO. And avoid creeping features. Guido had good reasons for his choices, I think. There was a long thread on python-dev awhile back, here's one post: https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2013-March/124842.html -- KBK _______________________________________________ IDLE-dev mailing list IDLE-dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/idle-dev
