[Idle-dev] Non-buildbot human mediated tests

[Ned Deily]

In article 
<CAO3PiBjvqSkBKXytLByg35H9-aHSMjT6i29Vw9cyssvhPhpECA at mail.gmail.com>,
 Saimadhav Heblikar <saimadhavheblikar at gmail.com> wrote:
> Have i missed any other aspect?

A metapoint about IDLE: it is crucial to keep in mind that IDLE is both 
a Python application and a Tk application.  In many ways, the latter is 
more significant than the former because, unfortunately but unavoidably, 
there are many more significant platform-dependent differences (e.g. 
Windows native vs X11 vs OS X native) in Tk apps than there are in 
Python apps.  That's primarily because Tk tries to adopt 
platform-specific behaviors and appearances to blend in with the GUI 
standards of the platform it is running on.  One simple example: on OS 
X, the standard is for there to be one application-specific menu bar 
presented at the top of the desktop screen; with Windows and X11 apps, 
the standard is to have a menu bar at the top of application windows.  
This has impact on IDLE's appearance to users: on Windows, if you have 
both a shell and an edit window open, each has its own customized menu 
bar with both visible, whereas on OS X, the single menu bar at the top 
shows only the menu options for the window which currently has input 
focus.  Another example is that the menu accelerator keyboard shortcuts 
vary from platform-to-platform due to both platform conventions and, in 
some cases, due to shortcomings in the Tk implementations.  A special 
case is the OS X Cocoa Tk implementation, the newest and the buggiest of 
the Tk implementations.  The versions shipped so far with OS X releases 
have proven to have enough serious problems that we strongly recommend 
users to not try to use them but use a newer, third-party version (like 
ActiveTcl) instead.

Because of all these differences, I don't think it is meaningful to talk 
about GUI tests of IDLE without a thorough consideration of the Tk 
aspects.  To be effective, any testing program will need to plan to test 
in all three of the major environments we currently support, taking into 
account their differences.  It also might be interesting to find out how 
the Tk project tests Tk and other Tk apps; perhaps something could be 
reused from there.

Good luck with the project!

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org