TO DO: - improve debugger: - manage breakpoints globally, allow bp deletion, tbreak, cbreak etc. - real object browser - help on how to use it (a simple help button will do wonders) - performance? (updates of large sets of locals are slow) - better integration of "debug module" - debugger should be global resource (attached to flist, not to shell) - fix the stupid bug where you need to step twice - insert the initial current directory into sys.path - default directory attribute for each window instead of only for windows that have an associated filename - command expansion from keywords, module contents, other buffers, etc. - "Recent documents" menu item - Filter region command - Optional horizontal scroll bar - more emacsisms: - parentheses matching - M-[, M-] to move by paragraphs - incremental search? - ^K should cut to buffer - restructure state sensitive code to avoid testing flags all the time - persistent user state (e.g. window and cursor positions, bindings) - make backups when saving - check file mtimes at various points - interface with RCS/CVS/Perforce ??? - status bar??? - better help? - don't open second class browser on same module (nor second path browser) - unify class and path browsers - use a tree widget instead of a smalltalk/NeXT style multicolumn browser Need to define a standard way whereby one can determine one is running inside IDLE (needed for Tk mainloop, also handy for $PYTHONSTARTUP) - Add utility methods for use by extensions (e.g. to get selection) Details: - when there's a selection, left/right arrow should go to either end of the selection - ^O (on Unix -- open-line) should honor autoindent - after paste, show end of pasted text - on Windows, should turn short filename to long filename (not only in argv!) (shouldn't this be done -- or undone -- by ntpath.normpath?) Structural problems: - too much knowledge in FileList about EditorWindow (for example) - Several occurrences of scrollable listbox with title and certain behavior; should create base class to generalize this ====================================================================== Jeff Bauer suggests: - The editor should show the current line number. - Open Module doesn't appear to handle hierarchical packages. - Class browser should also allow hierarchical packages. - Open and Open Module could benefit from a history, either command line style, or Microsoft recent-file style. - Add a Smalltalk-style inspector (i.e. Tkinspect) The last suggestion is already a reality, but not yet integrated into IDLE. I use a module called inspector.py, that used to be available from python.org(?) It no longer appears to be in the contributed section, and the source has no author attribution. In any case, the code is useful for visually navigating an object's attributes, including its container hierarchy. >>> from inspector import Tkinspect >>> Tkinspect(None, myObject) Tkinspect could probably be extended and refined to integrate better into IDLE. ====================================================================== Comparison to PTUI ------------------ + PTUI has a status line + PTUI's help is better (HTML!) + PTUI can attach a shell to any module + PTUI has more bells and whistles: open multiple append examine ? PTUI's fontify is faster but synchronous (and still too slow); does a lousy job if editing affects lines below - PTUI's shell is worse: no coloring; no editing of multi-line commands; ^P seems to permanently remove some text from the buffer - PTUI's undo is worse: no redo; one char at a time - PTUI's GUI is a tad ugly: I don't like the multiple buffers in one window model; I don't like the big buttons at the top of the widow - PTUI lacks an integrated debugger - PTUI lacks path and class browsers - PTUI lacks many of IDLE's features: - expand word - regular expression search - search files (grep) - (un)tabify - center - zoom height ====================================================================== Notes after trying to run Grail ------------------------------- - Grail does stuff to sys.path based on sys.argv[0]; you must set sys.argv[0] to something decent first (it is normally set to the path of the idle script). - Grail must be exec'ed in __main__ because that's imported by some other parts of Grail. - Grail uses a module called History and so does idle :-( ======================================================================