[Python-Dev] IDLE development (original) (raw)

Noam Raphael noamraph at gmail.com
Sun Sep 11 07:13:53 CEST 2005

On 9/11/05, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

Guido van Rossum wrote: > Often the needs of certain user groups and the development speeds of > such 3rd party modules are so different that it simply doesn't make > sense to fold them in the Python distribution anyway -- consider what > you would have to do if Kurt accepted your patches: you'll still have > to wait until Python 2.5 is released before others can benefit from > your changes, and if you come up with an improvement after that > release, your next chance will be 18 months later...

Isn't separate distribution the way the current version of Idle was developed? I seem to recall it existing as IDLEFork for a long time so that it could have a more rapid release cycle before being rolled into the main distribution.

Yes, it is. I answered on the way to maintain a more rapid release cycle of IDLE when developed in the Python CVS on my post in reply to Guido.

This approach also allows a wider audience to asess the subjective benefits of any changes made - many more people will download and try out a separate IDE than will download and try out a patch to the main distribution. I'm such a one, even though I believe my main problems with Idle lie in the Tcl/tk toolkit (so I don't expect any application level changes to alter my opinion much).

Can you please explain what are these problems? A big problem with Tcl/tk is that only one function call can be triggered by an event, and I solved it for IDLE by writing a wrapper around Tkinter classes, which calls all binded function calls on an event. This, for example, allows the yellow CallTip windows to disappear when the IDLE window loses focus, instead of staying above all other windows.

Thanks, Noam

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