FWD: Re: Problem w/ IDLE on Win2000

[Michael Chermside]

Tim Peters writes:
> Have you confirmed that a problem exists?  I haven't tried.

Yes, I confirmed the problem.

> Speaking of which, that doesn't look likely to change anytime soon, so if
> someone else is willing to take over the PLabs Windows installer, it's
> yours.  Overall, it's in very good shape.

> Most people accept the defaults.  "Program Files" is fine for an end-user
> app, but for a tool that's going to get used from scripts and command
> shells, a path with an embedded space is just begging for needless problems.

Of course... that's why I had tested 2.3, but had never tried putting it
in "Program Files". It was phenomenally dumb of Microsoft to use a space
in a standard directory (particularly the directory where programs go) on
an OS which (at the time anyway) didn't (always) handle paths containing
spaces. But it's still regrettable.

Given the other risks involved, let's phrase the warning in bugs.html as
"Warning: If Python is installed inside the "Program Files" directory
(or any other directory containing a space), then IDLE will not start
correctly. The preferred solution is to install to C:\Python23 (or some
other drive in place of C:), but it can also be fixed by editing the
shortcut for IDLE in the Programs menu."

> Speaking of which, that doesn't look likely to change anytime soon, so if
> someone else is willing to take over the PLabs Windows installer, it's
> yours.

I know nothing about the installer (or about installers in general). If 
it's just a matter of testing it out for releases, no problem, but how 
much difficulty am I going to be in if I volunteer here?

-- Michael Chermside