IDLE: A cornicopia of mediocrity and obfuscation.

[rantingrick]

On Feb 1, 9:54 am, Terry Reedy <tjre... at udel.edu> wrote:
> On 2/1/2011 12:13 AM, rantingrick wrote:
>
> > On Jan 31, 4:17 pm, Kevin Walzer<k... at codebykevin.com>  wrote:
> >> Rick,
> > Yes. IDLE is first and foremost a tool to get work done. However we
> > should not ignore the fact that IDLE could also be a great learning
> > resource for Tkinter GUI's and other subjects. Why not clean up the
> > code base? We could start small. First, move the custom widgets like
> > textView, Tabbedpages, FindDialog, ReplaceDialog, and TreeWidget into
> > the lib-tk for others to use more freely. Then we can modify the
> > "event robbers" CallTips, ParenMatch, and ColorDelegator.
>
> Perhaps, after the repository moves from svn to hg, some 'we' will.

Well the best attribute of IDLE is backward compatibility -- there is
none to worry about. IDLE is not a module with an interface, it's just
a tool. So we could change anything we want without worry of causing
code breakage. There is not good reason NOT to fix IDLE.

> Maybe Kevin would help a bit.

I was hoping he would get involved however his last post proved
otherwise. I know he has his own projects however he would have been a
valuable asset for the ttk theming stuff.

> Such a project would be carried out on the tracker and idle-sig mailing
> list. Normal decorum would be required -- no ranting or insulting. The
> first thing to do, in my opinion, is to review existing patches on the
> tracker.

Agreed. Terry (or anyone) can you give some link to info on "hg" so i
can study up on this topic? Thanks

> > Well some changes and improvements can be made to the UI as well.
>
> There is patch on the tracker, by G. Polo, as I remember, to replace tk
> widgets with the newer themed ttk widgets. It needs to be reviewed and
> tested. To make a big change (or proceed with any refactoring) better
> automated testing would be very useful.

Yes "turning on" the themes would be a huge improvement. I also wished
IDLE would look better.