IDLE in Jython

[Bill]

You might get better answers if you contact the Jython developers
themselves and look at their wiki -
http://www.jython.org/cgi-bin/wiki/FrontPage. Even though you found the
posting on a Python wiki, you really want to consult the Jython
community, and I'm not sure to what extent they participate in this
newsgroup.

Just by reading the description of the task and your post I'd say the
project is certainly doable, but not trivial. Since IDLE is a Python
application the path of least resistance would be to port it to Jython.
The majority of work would probably be in replacing the Tk GUI with a
Java-based GUI. You say that your people have experience with Swing so
you have a leg up on that part.

Since Jython currently does not support all of the latest Python, you
likely will have to work around some features incorporated in the
latest IDLE. As you say that your team has limited experience with
Python, this might be the most challenging part. I'd ask here just how
much experience your team has had with maintenance programming.
Modifying someone elses code is a different task than writing new code
from specifications, and some programmers dislike this kind of work. I
mention this because I think that designing and building an IDE from
scratch IS more than you want to tackle.

You might want to look at some of the other IDEs that support Python.
One of the things you'll want to do is reverse engineer IDLE. If you
are currently using Eclipse for Java development, there are a couple of
plugins for Python which should support Jython to some extent.

Bill