I propose that IDLE be renamed or at least viewed as a acronym for "Integrated Development and Learning Environment". (See below for history.) The specific change would be to make the first line of idle.rst and derivatives read (something like) "IDLE is an Integrated Development and Learning Environment for Python, writen in Python with the tkinter GUI package."

Besides making 'IDLE' a proper acronym, this would better express what IDLE is meant to be, at least now. A year ago, for instance, we added 'Turtle Demo' to the IDLE menu for instructional, rather than program development purposes.

For another example, Mark and I hope to improve visualization of a program in action by adding a slowed-down run mode that highlights source lines (just as in manual mode now). In other words, slideshow-like intelligent auto-stepping. https://bugs.python.org/issue25146 To me, this is as much for learning as for development of a specific program. I think it would work well with Turtle demos and algorithm visualization demos.

The old version of README.txt (before the change a couple of days ago) starts "IDLE is Python's Tkinter-based Integrated DeveLopment Environment." Note the capital 'L' in 'DeveLopement'.

help.txt and the derived idle.rst and help.html start "IDLE is the Python IDE built with the tkinter GUI toolkit.

--
Terry Jan Reedy

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