[issue37768] IDLE: Show help(object) output in a text viewer

[Tal Einat]

New submission from Tal Einat <taleinat at gmail.com>:

Currently, IDLE just writes the entire help message into the shell.

If auto-squeezing is enabled, then long help messages are automatically squeezed, following which the help text can be viewed in a text viewer or expanded inline.  This is still not great UX.

I propose to simply have help(object) open a text viewer with the help text.  There's actually an old (2007) comment in Lib\idlelib\pyshell.py by KBK that this should be done.

See related discussion in issue #35855.

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assignee: taleinat
components: IDLE
messages: 349073
nosy: taleinat, terry.reedy
priority: normal
severity: normal
stage: needs patch
status: open
title: IDLE: Show help(object) output in a text viewer
type: enhancement
versions: Python 3.7, Python 3.8, Python 3.9

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue37768>
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