Idle won't start

[David MacQuigg]

On 14 Dec 2003 10:50:29 -0800, kmneilso at yahoo.com (Kerry Neilson)
wrote:

>For the past couple of months, Idle won't start when I invoke it.  I
>am at a complete loss for why this is.  When this happens, they python
>command line still starts, and python works fine otherwise.
>Most interesting to me is that a reboot won't fix the problem.  But if
>I just try it again sometime later it will work.  Anyone have any
>ideas?  I'm running python 2.3 on windows 2000 professional.

This might be a different problem if your problem is truly
intermittent, but I am finding that IDLE has conflicts with other
installed programs.  I have been running Python 2.3 under Windows
XP-Home with no problem for the last few months.  Yesterday I
installed Ruby 1.8.1-11 and now IDLE won't start.  No response to
clicking the icon, selecting the menu item,  Nada.  Removing Ruby
restores IDLE.

With Ruby installed, when I run IDLE from a command line
C:\Python23\Lib\idlelib>idle.py
I get a message:
"""
_tkinter.TclError: Cant find a usable init.tcl in the following
directories:  <c:\ruby\tcl\lib\tcl8.3> <c:\ruby\tcl\lib\tcl8.3>
c:/ruby/tcl/lib/tcl8.4  C:/Python23/lib/tcl8.4  C:/lib/tcl8.4
C:/library
This probably means that Tcl wasn't installed properly.
"""
I have no idea why IDLE is looking for library routines in the Ruby
subdirectories, or why all the strange variations in the search path
above, but it is clear that Ruby and IDLE cannot co-exist on one
computer.

Note:  Re-installing Python23 after Ruby is installed doesn't help.
You have to remove Ruby completely.

-- Dave