[Baypiggies] Newbie: Python on Mac

[Ned Deily]

In article 
<AANLkTimHVnmjGk8zoFRgCpicM07eD6nFGjha3cr_LBWK at mail.gmail.com>,
 Alex Salkever <alex.salkever at gmail.com> 
 wrote:

>  You guys are correct. It is on Python 2.6 (I'm running Snow Leopard) - I
> got confused by something else I saw in Terminal (as I said, I'm a noob).
> But it still seems like the help documentation available is really sparse
> (basically non-existent). Is there better help documentation in 2.7 or later
> versions?

A simple way to install either Python 2.7 or Python 3.2 or both is by 
using the Python for Mac OS X installers available from python.org here:

http://www.python.org/download/

For Python 2.7.1, stick with the 32-bit only installer for OS X.  For 
Python 3.2, you could use either installer but if you do use the 64-bit 
installer you will need to install ActiveState Tcl/Tk 8.5.9 to use IDLE 
or other Tkinter-based GUI apps.

IDLE is Python's "built-in" integrated development environment.  It has 
some warts but many people still find it useful, especially when 
starting out.  The above installers will create version-specific folders 
in /Applications, i.e /Applications/Python 2.7 and/or 
/Applications/Python 3.2.  In either one, you will find an IDLE.app for 
that version of Python.  In the IDLE Help menu, there will be a link to 
a built-in version of the Python documentation set for that version.  
You can also find the latest versions on-line here:

http://docs.python.org/
http://docs.python.org/py3k/

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org