[Tutor] Help concerning raw_input urgently needed!

[Magnus Lycka]

At 08:54 2002-09-02 +0200, Gregor Lingl wrote:
>Moreover this occurs only within IDLE, not when using the=20
>python-interactive-interpreter.

I think the problem is that Tcl/Tk use Unicode these days,
and Python defaults to ISO8859-1. Thus your umlaut is ok
for raw_input in python proper. In IDLE, the characters are
recieved by Tk, and translated from Unicode. That fails on
any non-ASCII value, since these are ambiguous unless a
code page is supplied.

I've stumbled over similar Unicode/ASCII problems before with
IDLE. There has also been bugs previously that made it impossible
to enter floats such as "pi =3D 3.14" if the national settings
in Windows assumed decimal comma, such as in Swedish settings
etc. I didn't get a lot of response reagarding those problems.
(That was before IDLE was a "project".)

Maybe there were good and simple solutions for these things,
but I sure didn't manage to find them, and I didn't manage to
get any attention. It's seems the idle-dev mailing list is
equally uninterested now.

In general I find it difficult to find good information about
internationalization and localization issues for Python. Neither
in books, on the net, nor in mailing lists. Maybe it would work
better if I was fluent in German or Japanese... ;) After all
most of those who write in English don't need to worry about it...

My advice would be to avoid IDLE. I prefer PythonWin in Windows,
and there are several other environments that are better than
IDLE in my opinion. I think Tcl/Tk makes life harder for us.

In general I also suggest using wxPython rather than Tkinter.
One good reason for that is the rapid development and response
to bugs from Robin Dunn and others in the wxPython mailing list.
wxWindows and wxPython are not without flaws, but they both have
dynamic and responsive development communities that work well,
and are helpful for all levels of users.

I expect there to be a free IDLE killer in the wxPython package
eventually. PyCrust is a beginning.

I haven't used IDLE or Tkinter a lot in quite some time, so
maybe things changed and I didn't notice, but I feel confident
in the growth and development of wxPython. I also miss a
"Tkinter development community". Fredrik Lundh doesn't count
as a community. ;-)

In the long run, I guess we will see a unicodification of our
entire computer platforms, and hopefully some of these problems
will disappear, but it seems we are in a looong phase of
transition, and that certainly makes life a bit complicated
for us with more the 26 letters.


--=20
Magnus Lyck=E5, Thinkware AB
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