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[Python-Dev] IDLE in the stdlib

Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Thu Mar 21 12:19:09 CET 2013 
On 3/21/2013 5:20 AM, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> Le Thu, 21 Mar 2013 02:42:33 -0400,
> Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> a écrit :
>> On 3/20/2013 11:54 PM, Eli Bendersky wrote:
>>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 8:32 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu
>>
>>>      Ugly is subjective: by what standard and compared to what?
>>>
>>> Compared to other existing Python IDEs and shells which are layered
>>> on top of modern GUI toolkits that are actively developed to keep
>>> with modern standards, unlike Tk which is frozen in the 1990s.
>>
>> I think being frozen in the late 1990s is better than being frozen in
>> the early 1980s, like Command Prompt is.  In fact, I think we should
>> 'deprecate' the Command Prompt interpreter as the standard
>> interactive interpreter and finish polishing and de-glitching IDLE's
>> Python Shell, which runs on top of the windowless version of CP with
>> a true GUI.
>
> And this may indeed be reasonable under Windows, where the command-line
> is a PITA!

Which is the only context I was talking about.

> But the Linux command-line is actually quite very usable
> these days, especially if you configure your Python interpreter to use
> readline for tab-completion of identifiers (which should be done by
> default, see http://bugs.python.org/issue5845).

IDLE has tab-completion for both identifiers and attributes, in both 
shell and editor windows. It is probably under-documented; I am still 
learning to use it effectively. I am curious if the readline version 
works better in any way that IDLE could imitate.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy
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