Is there a way to configure IDLE to use spaces instead of tabs for indenting?

[Fabio Zadrozny]

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Alex <foo at email.invalid> wrote:
> Ramchandra Apte wrote:
>
>> On Saturday, 25 August 2012 04:03:52 UTC+5:30, Alex  wrote:
>> > I'm new to Python and have been using IDLE 3.2.3 to experiment with
>> >
>> > code as I learn. Despite being configured to use a 4 space
>> > indentation
>> >
>> > width, sometimes IDLE's "smart" indentation insists upon using
>> > width-8
>> >
>> > tabs.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > From what I've been able to find on Google, this is due to a
>> >
>> > shortcoming in Tk. While it's not that big a deal in the grand
>> > scheme
>> >
>> > of things, I think it looks like poop, and I'd like to change IDLE
>> > to
>> >
>> > use 4-space indentation instead of tabs for all indentation levels.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Is there any way for me to achieve what I want in IDLE, or do I
>> > have to
>> >
>> > start up my full-blown IDE if I want consistent 4-space indentation?
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Alex
>>
>> I think an IDE is better than IDLE. Try NINJA IDE.
>> http://ninja-ide.org
>
> Agreed. I like PyDev in Eclipse, but sometimes I just want to try out
> something quick in the interpreter, to ensure I understand it or do a
> quick experiment. Since indentation is syntactically significant in
> Python, I think fixing the interpreter to produce good, readable,
> cut-and-pasteable, and Pythonic code is more important than a cosmetic
> feature, but less important than true bugs.
> --


Actually, if you're in PyDev/Eclipse already, you can just use the
interactive shell that PyDev provides:
http://pydev.org/manual_adv_interactive_console.html

Cheers,

Fabio