[Python-Dev] [Idle-dev] Removing IDLE from the standard library

[Steve Holden]

Neil Hodgson wrote:
> Kurt B. Kaiser:
> 
>>> The tear off menus are ugly as well as being non-standard on all three
>>> major platforms.
>> Well, would you discard them? They can (occasionally) be useful.
> 
>    Yes, I would replace the menus with ones missing the tear line.
> Most of the GUI toolkits experimented with tear-offs (Mac in late 80s,
> GTK+ up until 2002) and dropped them or hid them in a rarely visited
> API. The idea initially appeared reasonable ("I can have the Run and
> Check commands available with a single click") but was found to be too
> confusing in use.
> 
>    IDLE, because it uses a separate top-level window for each file and
> shell suffers more than most applications. A menu is torn off from one
> window and always applies to that window but shows no visual affinity
> with that window: its window is not even activated when a menu command
> acts on it.
> 
I agree, the tear-off menus are an anachronism. I'd also like a pony in
the form of easily-changeable sets of keystroke mappings. I have never
found Alt-P and its cousins either memorable or comfortable.

I won't raise an issue for this. There are enough IDLE tickets without
it :-)

regards
 Steve
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