IDLE won't launch, and other frustrations

[David MacQuigg]

On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 09:57:35 -0500, "Michael A. Covington"
<look at www.covingtoninnovations.com.for.address> wrote:

>WN16 is WordNet 1.6, from Princeton University, basically a huge synonym
>dictionary of English.  They are up to version 2.0 now and it's much better
>behaved.  The open-source community is _finally_ learning something about
>how Windows works.  For a while there, inept Windows configuration seemed to
>be a point of pride with some kinds of free software tools!

I believe the problem lies with Microsoft for obfuscating the
installation process.  As good as they have done with usability for
the typical office user, they seem to have a deliberate strategy of
making things more complex than they need to be at the system level.
The registry is a prime example.  Another is the monolithic
integration of the desktop with the OS.  There are many such examples.
It's all part of the Lock In Strategy of software development.

Open-source developers are often not as expert in Windows
installations as a typical commercial developer targeting the Windows
platform.  We cannot blame them for falling into a few Microsoft
traps.  It's not like they don't *want* their programs to run on
Windows, or that they are "proud" of the problems they cause for
Windows users.  A few may a have a "don't care" attitude, but most
just don't realize that when they set a variable in AUTOEXEC.BAT, it
can mess up another program like IDLE.

Given the reality that other programs will be making blunders in their
installations, we should still be able to detect a bad setup for IDLE
and at least warn the user -- "Some other program has set the default
TCL/TK library to version 8.2.  IDLE cannot be installed unless you
remove the variable TCLxxxNNN from the current environment.

-- Dave