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Win95(9x/NT?) file extension / association tricks

Isidor rodisi01 at my-deja.com
Wed Jul 21 09:48:42 EDT 1999 
Hello Pythologists-

Here are some things I've done on my win95 boxito. They may or
may not work for win98 and NT, I have no idea.

When I right click on a .py file, I now have the following
options:

1)     run (same as installed "open", but I edited its "name" in
  the registry)
2)     open in IDLE
3)     open in notepad
4)     run w dos
5)     run w.o console

One of these may be of particular interest to you: "Run w DOS". I
made this one because I got really frustrated with buggy modules
running, printing out their error messages in the console, and
then the console disappearing moments later. I tried fiddling
with pifs and such, but had no luck. This file extension seems to
solve that problem. It runs a dos shell first, then python, then
your selected module. The dos shell remains open after the module
finishes running so you can see the error messages.

To make any of these additional actions, open a directory window,
and View --> Options --> File Types. Scroll down the file types
until you get to Python File. Double click on it. In the "Edit
File Type" dialog, click the "new" button.

In the text box titled: "Action", type the name of the action you
want, e.g., "open in IDLE", w/o the quotation marks. Put an
ampersand (&) in front of the letter that you want underlined in
the popup menu. Be sort of careful here because you won't be able
to edit this field in the future without going into the registry.
(Can you say "annoying"?)

Here is a list of action and "application used to perform action"
pairs:

1)     Open w &IDLE

  "C:\your python directory name here\pythonw.exe" "C:\your
  python directory name here\Tools\idle\idle.pyw" "%1" %*

  on my machine:

  "C:\Program Files\Python152\pythonw.exe" "C:\Program
  Files\Python152\Tools\idle\idle.pyw" "%1" %*

  This one opens an IDLE python shell and opens the module you
  selected as a separate window.

  NOTE: if IDLE is already open, this action will start from
  scratch and open yet *another* python shell etc. If anyone
  knows how to avoid this, I would be very happy to learn about
  it! (See below for more details on things I've tried.)

2)     Open w &Notepad

  Notepad.exe

3)     Run w &DOS

  C:\WINDOWS\command.com /k python.exe "%1"

  I like this one a lot for the reasons explained above.

  NOTE: you need to have your python directory on your system's
  "path" in order for this one to work. Putting or not putting
  python on that path has been a big subject of debate on this
  list. I'm not going to get into it here though. If you don't
  want to put python on your path, try this instead:

  C:\WINDOWS\command.com /k "C:\your python directory name
  here\python.exe" "%1"

  It works on my machine as well.

4)     Run w/o &console

  "C:\your python directory name here\pythonw.exe" "%1" %*


NOTE: some of your files may not be stored in the same places as
mine. I have no idea whether command.com still exists in win98 or
where it exists if it does, and where it exists on NT.

Most of this kind of trickery I figured out for myself, but I
found the following site somewhat helpful as well:  (
http://cpcug.org/user/clemenzi/technical/  go to the pages about
win explorer and win registry...good stuff!) It has info for
different win versions, too.


IDLE hack:

Ok, you idle, ahem, I mean, IDLE hackers, how do I do the
following?: a pop-up menu action item that (a) checks whether
IDLE is running. (b1) If it is, open the file in the already
running session (as a separate window, of course). (b2) If it
isn't, do what my other IDLE extension does: open an IDLE python
shell and the selected module.

What I tried:

After bungling my way through the various modules of IDLE,
following calls from one place to another (for more details on
that adventure, see a forthcoming post to this list), I
discovered: FileList.py. The test function for that module looked
like it might do the trick. "What an easy solution!" I thought. I
made the following extension action thing-a-ma-bob:

"C:\Program Files\Python152\pythonw.exe" "C:\Program
Files\Python152\Tools\idle\FileList.py" "%1"

When I ran it, up popped my module in an IDLE window without an
accompanying IDLE python shell. Yay. But....wait...it did this
*whether or not* IDLE was already open. No good. It *looked* like
I solved the problem, but I hadn't. The lone module window was
running in its own session of IDLE. If IDLE is already open, none
of the other existing IDLE windows appear in the "window list" of
the new module window. (Did that sentence make sense?)

(Does IDLE do DDE? Is that a *really* dumb question?)

Why do I want to do this? you ask. It probably seems pretty
stupid to you. Well, I like having a folder for each python
project. I don't want to have to open the registry to add a new
path to the python path every time I add a new project.) Also, I
tend to have a lot of directory windows open. If I am looking at
a directory with a module in it that I want to run, I don't want
to have to go to the IDLE window, go to "open file", and browse
all over kingdom come just to get back to the directory I was
just looking at. ;)

It would also be fun to do drag and drop...oooh...(not very
useful, but intriguing)

Anybody got any ideas about that?

Ok, I hope this is of some use to someone.

Take care-

Isidor
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