Hi Chris. I believe Mark is working on getting IDLE to be able to use more native-looking widgets with his tkinter work. As for "style sheets", IDLE already has something similar to this with the customizable syntax highlighting. I have some loose ideas for how this could be improved, and I was thinking that once the unified interactive shell/file editor window was done, updating the colors would be a good idea to give the "new IDLE" a more distinctive look (maybe something along the lines of Sublime Text's color scheme).
These are just idle thoughts, so to speak, and far from an actual proposal on my part. -Al On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 4:42 AM, Chris Roffey <ch...@codingclub.co.uk> wrote: > Dear Mark > > This is excellent! It is humbling to see how much work is done by a > dedicated few on IDLE development. > I have read through the document you linked to and found it very > interesting. Ensuring IDLE looks professional and natural on all platforms > is very important for students (the biggest cohort of beginners) as they > make first impressions very quickly. Getting rid of annoying bugs is also > very important as it gives one less thing for students to moan about - > remember, learning to program, requires a great deal of persistence and > resilience - every unnecessary obstacle is a potential turn-off for > possibly able students. So all the IDLE-dev team’s hard work on this is > invaluable. > > Keeping things simple appears to be a mantra of this group - and it is a > good one. I am no longer convinced that having a complete panelled IDLE > interface like I suggested before is necessary or even the best option. I > now think that keeping any windowed apps (using tkinter or turtle modules) > out of the interface simplifies and makes it more flexible as long as they > appear on top when run. There was a time when turtle windows appeared > behind the shell window and the script window meaning a lot of the turtle’s > activity was missed while the window was found. This appears to be fixed > and it appears front central now (on my Mac at least) – perfect! > > I have been developing my thoughts further trying to produce my ideal > IDE/text editor for teaching with. I have called it CREATE rather than IDLE > so that it is easier to refer to (rather than Chris Roffey’s possible > version of IDLE.) > > http://codingclub.co.uk/images/CREATE-overview.png > > Feature wise, I am not sure that it is very challenging in terms of > programming as I am not suggesting many feature requests (except major > things like ‘Deploy' - that could be developed outside of this team and > then linked to.) A lot of work would need to be done on documentation and > aliases for error messages but this IS something I could help with. > However, is tkinter up to the sort of sliding panels I am suggesting? Mark, > please sit down for this next question - I am loath to make it as I know > how much work people have already done and I am well aware I am new to the > group but - would it be better to use a more sophisticated system for the > graphical side of IDLE that implements platform native windowing facilities > and allows for style sheets? This might take away some of the complexities > of implementing tkinter features for the users whilst running tkinter in > the IDE - I don’t know? > > The reason I make such bold statements is I am aware of the trend in > education recently is to produce fantastic drag and drop environments for > students coding prior to learning a text based language like Python e.g. > Scratch (fantastic), Kodu (not so sure). So to make a good impression, any > IDE needs to compete at least in terms of looks and ease of use with these. > Although I agree with others on this group that IDLE should not be trying > to compete with professional IDEs currently available - I do think that > students deserve something as sophisticated and professional as the > developers, but written with them in mind. > > The question is, should and could IDLE do this? > > Best wishes > Chris > > > On 31 Aug 2015, at 20:44, Mark Roseman <m...@markroseman.com> wrote: > > > > As I’ve been making changes to various pieces of IDLE’s user interface, > I’ve been documenting the updates in the form of a case study. I hope that > will be useful to others modernizing a Tk-based application. I’ve put a > draft of that, as well as a snapshot of the current code, here: > > > > http://www.tkdocs.com/tutorial/idle.html > > > > I’m looking forward to helping do whatever I can to migrate some of > these changes into IDLE’s official codebase. But in the meantime if anyone > can take a read or try the code, that would be great! > > > > Some of the deeper changes to allow (cleanly) for more of a single > window model will probably have to wait until a few more of these > preliminaries find their way in. > > > > Mark > > > > _______________________________________________ > > IDLE-dev mailing list > > IDLE-dev@python.org > > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/idle-dev > > _______________________________________________ > IDLE-dev mailing list > IDLE-dev@python.org > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/idle-dev >
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