[Idle-dev] (no subject)

[Scott David Daniels]

Mark Fenton wrote:
>    Tried your advise about using the "pythonw" configuration in the 
> shortcut's properties, but sadly it didn't work, maybe it's because I'm 
> using Pyhton24 which may make all the difference (not sure about this 
> though).
Yup, the -m argument was introduced in 2.5.  However, the pythonw vs.
python is much older, so try:
  C:\Python24\pythonw.exe C:\Python24\Lib\idlelib\idle.pyw  -r C:\hilo.py
In the target line.

> More success on the colourization line of code though it produced only 
> one colour and that was red. The color is changeable by changing Idle
config, but if you are hoping for a cheap way into GUI, this isn't it;
bite the bullet and learn some Tkinter or wxPython, depending on your
tastes.  I'd go for Tkinter if you wan to learn up from low level, and
wxPython if you want to grab examples and modify to taste. (But that is
an entirely subjective view of the difference).

> .... If I could find a small program to colourize strings that 
> would be great as I don't know much about the colourzing process in 
> python, but I guess there's not much call for colouring strings (unless 
> for warnings etc) in general Python work. 
Well, Python itself has no model of the color of the text it is
outputting, so this is a matter of your communicating with the display 
infrastructure in and around the text you want it to display.  Python
doesn't know what screens, keyboards, and mice are; it would be happy
doing its I/O over a Morse code connection if you could really do that
(I think something about Morse code is ambiguous in a way people,
rather than machines, have no problem dealing with.)

I think I detect in you the hope that doing a GUI should not be
hard; you should be able to nickel and dime your way into it.  I
understand the sentiment.  I have for some time had the sneaky
suspicion that there is something small inside these GUI monsters
crying to get out, but I've felt that way since 1980, and I've
never read anything that makes me think,
     "Ahh, _that_ is how you do it simply and clearly."
So, perhaps I won't ever see that simplicity.  We certainly don't
reward simplicity in the normal software business anywhere so much
as we should.  Most buy-in-a-box software is evaluated by comparing 
feature lists, rewarding complicated over simple.  For that matter
gcc is no paragon of simplicity.  But Python is simple in the sense
I mean, and Google is simple in the "using it" sense as well, so
we can guess that the market does not completely punish simplicity.

--Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org