[Python-Dev] [Idle-dev] Removing IDLE from the standard library (original) (raw)

Neil Hodgson nyamatongwe at gmail.com
Mon Jul 12 13:14:08 CEST 2010

Kurt B. Kaiser:

I'm mystified about the comments that the GUI is ugly.  It is minimal. On XP, it looks exactly like an XP window with a simple menubar.  Those who haven't looked at it for awhile may not be aware of the recent advances made by Tk in native look and feel.  What is ugly?

While Tk has improved at emulating native appearance, there are still many differences.

On the main editing screen of IDLE, the most noticeable issue is that there is no horizontal scroll bar even though the text will move left when you move the caret beyond the rightmost visible character. The scrollbar and status bar have an appearance that looks to be from Windows 2000, not Windows XP and there is no resizing gripper on the right side of the status bar. The tear off menus are ugly as well as being non-standard on all three major platforms.

Use the "Configure IDLE..." and an "idle" dialog appears that also looks to be from Windows 2000. I know Tk can do better than this as Git Gui (the Tk (8.5.8) program I use most often) at least shows XP themed buttons, scrollbars and other controls. However, the "idle" dialog (as well as Git Gui) shows the largest remaining problem for Tk user interfaces: keyboard navigation. When the "idle" dialog opens, try doing anything with the keyboard. Chances are nothing will happen. If you press Tab 16 times (yes, 16!) a focus rectangle will finally show on the "Bold" check box. Another Tab takes you to the "Indentation Width" slider. After that you don't see the focus until it wraps around to "Bold" again. The Enter key doesn't trigger OK and the Escape key doesn't let you escape.

The Find and Replace dialogs are better as focus works as do Enter and Escape but none of the buttons have mnemonics.

This may all sound like picking nits but details and consistency are important in user interfaces and this is just looking at the most easily discovered problems.

Neil

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list