[Idle-dev] More on saving files

[Bruce Sherwood]

David Scherer said:

> 2) The program always executes *as though* the user had saved all buffers.
> If the user's script imports a module which is being edited, the editor
> buffer needs to be used instead of the file on disk.
>
> 3) A single keystroke suffices to run a program.
> 
> One way to implement this is with ".new" files.  Another, which makes a
> lot of sense in a multiple-process model, is to pass the buffers directly
> to the loader program through the control channel (a socket in my design).
> In either case, import needs to be hooked to get the right version of
> modules.

You're right about the desirability of this "as though" behavior, including
the edit buffers for any modules that I happen to have open at the moment.
However, just sending the edit buffers to the loader program wouldn't do
everything that I like so much about your current version of IDLE, namely
that whenever I run I know for sure that my most recent edits have been
saved permanently to disk and don't reside solely in memory buffers. I have
come to really appreciate the sense of security that comes from knowing
that this successful run corresponds to the program on disk. I want the
combination of saving to ".new" with passing the edit buffers to the loader.

Bruce Sherwood