interpreter improvements

[kevin parks]

"Chris Gonnerman" <chris.gonnerman at newcenturycomputers.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.995692716.8559.python-list at python.org>... > Are you on Windows? 

I on a Macintosh, so maybe that is why. I mistakenly
assumed that all interpreters were the same, more or
less. Our IDE is a bit primitive and IDLE is broken
(Tkinter is mostly broken i understand). Jack Jansen,
Just, & Co. work hard to get Python happening on the Mac
but we still lag far behind it seems. I recently tried
Python out on Windows and i was surprised how sweet it
was compared to the Mac. We don't even have syntax
coloring!

Anyway, i spend all day in the interpreter and i was
hoping to make it a more pleasant experience. I can't
believe you can't do:

>>> foo(somereallylongbitofcodegoeshere,
itsrealllybothersomeifyoumistype) [change a bunch of crap here]
>>> !foo

Like you can in csh, or use your arrow keys to go back
and fix something in your history and re-enter. Most
annoyingly you can type past the space that follows the:
>>> prompt and screw things up and if you are in the
middle of a command and hit enter it only enters up to
where your cursor is on the line instead of entering the
whole line like most shells do.

Python some times seems to be like a really fine tuned
engine inside an old beat up old jalopy. What Python
does is amazing, but sometimes, at least on Mac, you
feel like you are running an old DOS window in the 3.1
days. I really wish the mac had 1 decent IDE, with 1
decent editor, and a nice well behaved interpreter.


Either that or i have to learn to type perfectly and
make no mistakes