[IPython-dev] Curses Frontend Update

[Wendell Smith]

Hi!

Yes, you do need to upgrade urwid. I have 0.9.9.1, which is also the 
latest in pypi, so 'easy_install -U urwid' should do it.

Secondly, I agree about dropping Urwid. I hate to do it... but, well, 
python 3 support is definitely something I want, and when I asked 
them... they basically said they hadn't thought much about it.

As for line counts... they are pretty accurate. Both versions come with 
some testing code that is unnecessary ('keytester.py' and 
'vipadtester.py' in curses, 'palette_test.py' in urwid), but if you 
removed those, the line counts would be even more skewed in favor of 
urwid. As for functionality, they are quite close - except that the 
urwid version handles resizing events just from the library, and the 
curses code looks terrible / would crash after resizing, and I'll need 
to write that.

So... yes, it would be really nice to use urwid... but I may never be 
able to with python3, so I guess I can't, unfortunately. That's OK, and 
as my curses implementation shows, it may be more difficult with the 
built in curses library, but its definitely possible.

I still have a long todo list before I start doing any interpreter stuff:
  - rewrite vipad (in curses - my current implementation is cool, but 
not that useful)
  - write a nice editbox window (needed for either urwid or curses if we 
want coloring as you type)
  - get scrolling to work (needed either way, although I believe urwid 
has a widget for that)
  - allow for resizing (in curses)
  - handle adjustable-size completions box (done in urwid, not too hard 
in curses once resizing is handled)

I'm sure there's more... but that's all I've thought of so far.

Anyways, thanks for the comments!

-Wendell


On 04/22/2010 04:58 AM, Fernando Perez wrote:
> Hi Wendell,
>
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 5:55 AM, Wendell 
> Smith<wackywendell at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Hello!
>>
>> I have been busy coding away, trying to get two prototypes written for
>> the eventual curses frontend.
>>
>> They are EXTREMELY basic - they don't even interpret code, just spit it
>> back out (although in the right place and correctly colored). They are
>> full of bugs, don't resize well, etc. - but, well, they are prototypes.
>>
>> What they do:
>> They both have 3 windows: completions, output, and input. The
>> completions window shows some default text, the input window accepts
>> text input, and after hitting enter or<ctrl-g>, the entered code is
>> highlighted and displayed in the output window.
>>
>> I wrote these both mainly to compare urwid and curses, which I think
>> they do fairly well. the urwid library is quite nice, and although
>> documentation is not perfect, it is good, and the whole thing provides
>> far more than curses - curses requires you to manually handle resizing,
>> for example. The code for the urwid part is therefore far simpler, and
>> was written much faster. It of course requires urwid (easy_install
>> urwid), and both require pygments (also available with easy_install).
>> Urwid is much nicer... but development is only semi-active, and they
>> don't seem at all prepared to port to python3, which is of course 
>> important.
>>
>> Anyways, please download the code, run the prototypes, tell me what you
>> think!
>>
>> Code is on github here:
>> git://github.com/wackywendell/ipyurwid.git
>> git://github.com/wackywendell/ipycurses.git
> Great!  A few comments:
>
> - On ubuntu 9.10, I get this for the urwid code:
>
> (master)amirbar[ipyurwid]>  python interpreterwidget.py
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>    File "interpreterwidget.py", line 112, in<module>
>      interp = fakeinterpreter(mainwin)
>    File "interpreterwidget.py", line 81, in __init__
>      self.formatter = UrwidFormatter(style=s)
>    File "/home/fperez/ipython/wendell/ipyurwid/urwidpygments.py", line
> 29, in __init__
>      self._setup_styles(colors)
>    File "/home/fperez/ipython/wendell/ipyurwid/urwidpygments.py", line
> 92, in _setup_styles
>      fgcolstr, bgcolstr, othersettings, colors)
>    File "/home/fperez/ipython/wendell/ipyurwid/urwidpygments.py", line
> 72, in findclosestattr
>      fg = self.findclosest(fgcolstr, colors)
>    File "/home/fperez/ipython/wendell/ipyurwid/urwidpygments.py", line
> 54, in findclosest
>      bestcol = urwid.AttrSpec('h0','default')
> AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'AttrSpec'
>
> I have:
>
> In [2]: urwid.__version__
> Out[2]: '0.9.8.4'
>
> Do I need a newer urwid to test out?
>
> Still, this is a tough one: I am genuinely worried about depending on
> a possibly undeveloped project. Have you contacted the urwid devs to
> find out a little bit about future plans/py3 development ideas?
>
> Using curses when urwid is around may feel painful, but at this point
> closing the door on py3k development possibilities sounds a little
> dangerous for us.  On the other hand, I do see the differences:
>
> amirbar[wendell]>  wc -l ipyurwid/*py
>    117 ipyurwid/interpreterwidget.py
>    252 ipyurwid/palette_test.py
>    105 ipyurwid/urwidpygments.py
>    474 total
>
> amirbar[wendell]>  wc -l ipycurses/*py
>    151 ipycurses/basicsequence.py
>    142 ipycurses/cursesextras.py
>     71 ipycurses/cursesparser.py
>    347 ipycurses/cursespygments.py
>     32 ipycurses/interpreterwidget.py
>     11 ipycurses/ipythontest.py
>     18 ipycurses/keytester.py
>     57 ipycurses/prototype.py
>     66 ipycurses/tester.py
>    241 ipycurses/vipad.py
>    123 ipycurses/vipadtester.py
>   1259 total
>
> Since I can't run the urwid code right now, how equivalent are the two
> in terms of functionality? I'm basically trying to gauge if the above
> line counts can be fairly compared...
>
> Cheers,
>
> f