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On Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:41:53 -0700, Eli Bendersky <eliben@gmail.com> wrote:

> Personally, I think that IDLE reflects badly on Python in more ways than

> one. It's badly maintained, quirky and ugly. It serves a very narrow set of

> uses, and does it badly.

>

> Being part of Python *distributions* and being part of core Python standard

> library are two different things. The former may make sense, the latter

> IMHO makes no sense whatsoever. Outside the Python core IDLE can be

> maintained more freely, with less restrictions on contributors and

> hopefully become a better tool.

On the other hand, after several years of almost complete neglect,
we have some people interested in and actively contributing to making
it better \*in the stdib\*. �Terry has proposed a PEP for allowing it
to see more rapid changes than a "normal" stdlib package, and I haven't
perceived a lot of opposition to this. �I think Terry's PEP represents
less of change to how we do things than bundling an externally maintained
IDLE would be, especially with respect to Linux.

FYI I talked to someone at PyCon who is not a current contributor to
IDLE but who is very interested in helping with it, and it sounded like
he had the backing of his organization to do this (it was a quick hall
conversation and unfortunately I did not get his name). �So we may be
approaching an inflection point where IDLE will start getting the love
that it needs.