Better terminal for windows?

[Fernando Pérez]

Gerhard Häring wrote:

>> If I want to run python interactively (and perhaps using ipython), is
>> there something better than the "cmd" terminal?
> 
> Well, you could install MSYS from the mingw project, which is sort of a
> Cygwin-lite :-)
> 
>> I'm used to bash on linux at home, but I'd like to avoid installing
>> cigwin for now. Thanks.
> 
> cmd.exe isn't that bad once you activate tab completion in the
> registry. Have you done that?

That is, as long as you aren't interested in tab completion for python :) The 
problem is lack of support for readline, which is how you get tab completion 
under python.

The other problem is that the windows terminal doesn't properly honor ANSI 
color escapes. I tried a lot to get ipython's coloring to work under windows 
and finally gave up in disgust. Why is it that MS can't be bothered to _ever_ 
follow the simplest standards?

So some of ipython's nicest functionality (full support for tab completion for 
both objects and files,  and color-enhanced information, tracebacks and even 
syntax highlighted source info) are gone under Windows.

If you know of a way to fix this, patches are welcome :)

Cheers,

f.