[Pythonmac-SIG] Various IDE answers, comments

[Just van Rossum]

Sorry I didn't mix in with the discussions earlier: I was away from my
email for two weeks.

I've tried to digest all traffic, but I'm sure I've missed a couple of
points. Please email me privately if I failed to address some issues.

1. Class/method popup
Currently it indeed only works for files that use tabs for indentation.
This can easily be fixed separately from Oliver Steele's stuff, and I
probably will very soon. But...

2. Non-tab indentation
I might prefer to solve this as a file read/write filter which will
transform any indentation into tab based indentation upon read and
transform to the original style of indentation upon write. I would leave
any non-indenting whitespace as it is. Would this be acceptable or would
Oliver Steele's approach be preferred?

3. Printing
Although I appreciate the efforts to add printing code to the IDE, I will
not put those mods in the distribution until it supports the page setup and
print records properly. Most notably: paper size and from/to page number
fields.

4. Syntax coloring
Similarly, as long as the code isn't solid (like IDLE's) I won't put it
into the distribution, since it will be confusing for newbies if it screws
up. Also, there needs to be a user interface for setting the various
font/color properties. I meant to look into both issues long ago, but have
not been able to do so. Don't get me wrong: I think syntax coloring is very
important, and it's high on my wish list. I still hope to look into it
deeper soon-ish.

5. IDE API
There should indeed be a standard way to get to the frontmost script
editor. I think this is best done through the application object, something
like:

import W
app = W.getapplication()  # this already works
e = app.getfronteditor()

6. W documentation
I admit that W is poorly documented. My collegue Erik has built some
documentation for/from it for our RoboFog project. Please have a look at
http://www.petr.nl/robofog/reference/index.html (click "module W" in the
modules frame, other modules are RoboFog-specific) and let us know whether
it's any good. Besides that, I will attempt to add more docstrings.


Just