Python and IDEs [was Re: Python 3 is killing Python]

[Gregory Ewing]

Chris Angelico wrote:
> It's a little awkward when you have
> an invoicing screen and you put something like "P&O Shipping" as your
> customer name, and suddenly Alt-O takes you someplace different.

An app that did that would be seriously broken, wouldn't it?
The & should only be interpreted that way in menu items, etc.,
not in user data.

> but if the menu comes up
> right near where your eyes are already focused, you need to move
> _them_ less distance

But putting the menu bar at the top of the window doesn't
guarantee that it will be near where your eyes are. If
you have a window taking up most of the screen and you're
editing something near the bottom, a menu bar at the top
of the window is nearly as far away as one at the top of
the screen.

It would make more sense to pop the menu up near the text
cursor. There's no law that says a menu summoned by
keystroke has to appear in the same place as one summoned
by mouse.

In any case, when you use a shortcut sequence, do you
really *look* at the menu that comes up, or do you just
memorise the appropriate alt-sequence? If you use it
frequently, I suspect the latter. If you don't use it
very often, having to look away doesn't matter so much.

> Okay. So you need to first click on something in the dock - that's the
> thing down the bottom of the screen, right? - and then go all the way
> up to the top of the screen to use its menu bar.

Because of the "throw the mouse" effect, going *all* the
way to the top takes a tiny fraction of a second and is
almost effortless. Going any lesser distance takes
*much* longer.

> I think I'd much
> rather have a popup menu - right-click the program's dock icon and get
> the menu right there where the mouse already is.

Dock icons do have a contextual menu, but it's just a
menu of windows. Fitting all of the app's menus in there
would require hierarchical menus, which are an abomination
you don't want to get me started on. :-)

> Oh wait, that
> requires people to understand more than a single mouse button, so it's
> contrary to Mac philosophy :)

The Mac philosophy on that seems to be widely misunderstood.
Having only one button on my mouse doesn't mean there's
only one thing I can do with it. I can shift-click, option-
click, command-click, and nowadays control-click, plus any
combination of those. That's enough for anyone to keep in
their head, I would have thought.

There's also one concrete advantage to using modifiers
instead of extra mouse buttons: you can provide feedback
by changing the cursor when a modifier is held down.

-- 
Greg