[Idle-dev] Fixing and Improving IDLE

[Roger Serwy]

I am glad that you are willing to help with fixing IDLE. Tkinter 
experience is not a strong prerequisite; you can contribute simply by 
testing patches already provided and giving your feedback. With more 
reviewers we can iron-out any unanticipated side-effects.

I can offer what I know about IDLE's internals if you or anyone else 
needs it (while it is still fresh in my memory) .

Al Sweigart's article discusses several important shortcomings of IDLE. 
Nick Coghlan created a meta-issue for it: #13504.  Some of those issues 
are actually fixed in IdleX.


On 12/12/2011 01:30 PM, Sean Wolfe wrote:
> Nice to see this mail! I'm a big fan of IDLE though and it's nice to
> see. I'm not really a IDLE developer yet but I'm boning up on tkinter
> to try and help out in the future... maybe in time to help out with
> this.
>
> Did you guys catch this article? I think so cause there are a lot of
> comments. Anyhow, I dig a lot of the suggestions.
> http://inventwithpython.com/blog/2011/11/29/the-things-i-hate-about-idle-that-i-wish-someone-would-fix/
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 12:59 PM, Roger Serwy<roger.serwy at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> IDLE Developers,
>>
>> By my count there are over 110 valid open issues against IDLE, some minor
>> and others major. Let's try to make that number smaller.
>>
>> Here is a partial list of issues that have working patches:
>>
>> 3573    IDLE hangs when passing invalid command line args (directory(ies)
>> instead of file(s))
>> 5219    IDLE/Tkinter: edit win stops updating when tooltip is active
>> 6698    IDLE no longer opens only an edit window when configured to do so
>> 6699    IDLE: Warn user about overwriting a file that has a newer version on
>> filesystem
>> 7136    Idle File Menu Option Improvement
>> 7676    IDLE shell shouldn't use TABs
>> 8515    idle "Run Module" (F5) does not set __file__ variable
>> 8900    IDLE crashes if Preference set to At Startup ->  Open Edit Window
>> 13039   IDLE editor: shell-like behaviour on line starting with ">>>"
>> 13179   IDLE uses common tkinter variables across all editor windows
>> 13495   IDLE: Regression - Two ColorDelegator instances loaded
>> 13506   IDLE sys.path does not contain Current Working Directory
>>
>> Can these patches be applied? I understand that there will be need for some
>> discussion, but we should try to avoid the bike shed problem.
>>
>> Not surprisingly, there are a lot of "duplicate" bug reports. Some issues
>> deal with invalid key bindings and should have a common solution: 4765,
>> 5707, 6739, 11437, 12387, 13071. (IdleX already has a work-around for these
>> issues.) Other issues deal with permission error handling of
>> configHandler.py: 4625, 8231, 9404, 9925.
>>
>> One major patch which requires some updating and much consideration is:
>> 10079   idlelib for Python 3 with Guilherme Polo GSoC enhancements
>> There are a lot of good improvements in there.
>>
>> I am willing to help with fixing the remaining bugs if the IDLE developers
>> are willing to help as well.
>>
>> - Roger
>>
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>
>