Suggested improvements for IDLE (non-official)

[Terry Reedy]

r wrote:
> On Jan 14, 4:43 pm, Terry Reedy <tjre... at udel.edu> wrote:
> [snip]
>> I think the 'main' IDLE maintainer is no longer active.  I think someone
>> who would do more than fix critical bugs might be welcome.
> 
> Hello Terry,
> That's what i was beginning to think. I am not quite ready (as far as
> my skills are concerned) to put out something that would be as useful
> to many people. I could hack together something real quick for myself.
> This is why i am looking for like-minded people who would be
> interested in this. I have the foresight and willpower at this point
> to contribute something meaningful to the Python community -- to give
> back.

If you are willing and able to channel your obvious enthusiasm and 
energy into incremental improvements, you could make meaningful 
contributions within weeks and months.  If you go to
http://bugs.python.org/issue?@template=search&status=1
and select IDLE in the 'Components' field and hit 'Search',
you will get a list of (at the moment) 66 open issues.  Some are bug 
reports, some feature requests.  Some have patches waiting for review 
and some not.  There may be some (near?) duplicate and obsolete items 
that could be closed after review.  Pick one issue and help resolve it.

Reviewing exiting patches would be definitely helpful.  For instance, I 
would particularly like to see
   http://bugs.python.org/issue2704
   Patch to make PyShell behave more like a Terminal interface
tested and applied.  It was posted last April and revised in June.

Should you decide to do this, and wish further input from me, let me 
know, on or off list.

> OFF-TOPIC:(but related)
> What is the state of Tkinter at this point. Is an active effort under
> way to port TK 8.5 into Python? Tkinter and IDLE are very important to
> Python, but i understand there are much more important areas where the
> GURU's are concentrating. Should there be a calling for "others" to
> get involved here? I would like to help out.

Running a search from the same page for '8.5' in the 'All text' box gave 
no hits.  I would tend to expect that 8.5 upgrades to tkinter would be 
welcome at some point, but anyone actively ready to work on it could 
open a tracker issue or inquire on py-dev first.

Terry Jan Reedy