[Idle-dev] Dealing with a few feature requests

[Tal Einat]

On 5/24/07, Tal Einat <taleinat at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A few requests that have come up, and I want to hear some comments on
> them:
>
> * Ctrl+Right behavior: It as been suggested that pressing Ctrl+Right
> should jump to the next word ending, instead of the next word beginning like
> it currently does. There is currently no way to get to the end of a word
> with the keyboard except to use the arrow keys repeatedly. It is also
> non-intuitive to some users.
>
> * Cursor color change: For changes to the cursor's color to take effect,
> IDLE must be restarted. This is a known issue with Tk's Text widget, so I
> don't see how we could work around this... Still, we could have a popup
> message appear after a change to the cursor color in the config dialog,
> informing the user of this. I've seen several bug reports on this already,
> and have heard by word of mouth that this has frustrated several more
> people.
>
> * Tabbed pages - This is the #1 feature request right now. I know several
> people who don't use IDLE just because of the lack of tabbed pages. Is
> anyone willing to help me work on this? I have done initial work (creating a
> solid TabbedPages widget), what's left is mostly hacking IDLE's internals to
> use the TabbedPages widget instead of opening new windows.
>
> - Tal
>


Ok, I'll try to summarize the responses until now:

* Cursor change - I figured out it's an IDLE bug, wrote up a fix, and sent a
patch to SF.

* Ctrl+Right behavior - It seems that the opinions are divided: Some (Micael
Foord, Alan Gauld) say that it should be as it is, because this is the
standard in most IDEs, text editors and word processors. Others (Adam
Bachman, Douglas S. Blank) prefer to change the behavior (skip to next word
end instead of next word start) because it's more practical. IMO unless
someone comes up with a compelling reason to change this, or writes up a
patch which makes this behavior user-configurable (and keeps the current
behavior as the default), this isn't going to happen.

* Tabbed pages - As usual, everyone wants this, but (almost) nobody wants to
do it. I can't imagine this happening any time soon unless:
1) Someone volunteers to do this, or at least help out. Douglas, you said
you'd be willing to help - to what extent?
2) Some money is donated to the cause, in which case I'd be willing to do
this. It's too big a project for me to take up just for fun these days.
3) This becomes a Google SoC (Summer of Code) project, or part of one.

I would really like to have Tabbed Pages in IDLE, and I know I'm not alone!
Please help this become a reality.

- Tal
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