[Tutor] IDLE question

[Alan Gauld]

> >Why? It's not valid Python?! :-)
>
> You mean because the indenting has shown up incorrectly in my email?

the email formatting.

> >Well you can use IDLE as that text editor by using File->NEw to
create
> >a new window....
>
> I've been doing this. I should have said I was trying to use IDLE's
> interactive prompt.

We guessed because this is a common problem for newbies with Python.
Which is why I think its a bug... maybe someday I'll get annoyed
enough to see if I can find a way to patch it. :-)

> >If you want a >>> prompt with the color coding and other bells of
IDLE
> >try the pyShell that comes with wxPython. It is now my preferred
> >Python interactive prompt...
>
> To use the pyShell that comes with wxPython, I'd have to download
and
> install and use all of wxPython, I suppose.

Not at all. I rarelyt use wxPython as a GUI framework I only use the
tools that come with it. I prefer Tkinter, I find it easier to work
with.
wxPython is essentially a set of modules that you can use or not as
you like. But it does include some nice tools with PyCrust and PyShell
etc.

> best GUI toolkit. But if I switch to wxPython, except for not using
> tkinter, will I be able to rely on the Python documentation,
tutorials
> and books for learning Python? I'm guessing I can, but can you
confirm this?

Sure, you can still use IDLE if you like - I do sometimes for working
with
whole files and using the IDLE debugger. wxPython doesn't change
Python
itself just adds some new modules that you can imp[ort and use.

It is a big download for just the tools, and you might find that
Pythonwin gives you the same benefit(and every windows user should
have the winall package installed!). If you only work in Windows I'd
go there first but I use Windows, Linux and MacOS so IDLE/PyShell is
a better solution.

> programming language." Does this mean I'd have to know C++ to use
the
> wxWidgets?

No, but some of the wxWindows documentation is in C++ and you need
to read it to understand some bits of wxPython, at least until the
Python documentation catches up with the C++ stuff.

> Or is it the case that I would no more need to know C++ for
> wxPython than I need to know C to use Python.

Slightly more the case because the wxPython docs aren't complete yet.
Occasionally you have to read the underlyiig C++ stiff, which you
never need with standard Python. But if you don't use the
wxPython GUI classes and stick with Tkinter then you don't need to
worry! :-)

Alan G.