Terry J. Reedy added the comment:

The problem with just /\t/    / is the absence of a secondary prompt.

>>> def f():
    return 'not acceptible'

Hence the 8+4+4... proposal. With a proportional font, the return would start 
to the *left* of def. Adding '... ' works for fixed pitch fonts, but '...' is 
much narrower than '>>>' in a proportional font.

The problem with mandating 'fixed pitch' is that unicode fonts, such as Lucida 
Sans Unicode on Windows, are proportional.  With that font, spaces are very 
narrow: '8+4' would need to be 13 + 4 + 4 ... to look right, *on Idle*.  I feel 
that continuing to work with proportional fonts, for code not limited to ascii, 
is more important than this issue.

To look right regardless of font, code should start at the margin, with prompts 
in a separate narrow window. This means that output would not be dedented under 
input prompts.
---------------------------------------
 in> def f():
         print('code against margin')

out> code against margin
---------------------------------------
' in> ' and 'out> ' (or whatever input and output indicators were used) would 
be in a vertical strip (like line numbers) with, say, a light gray background 
(such as used here).  Normal output would be, say, the current blue on a very 
light blue background. Similarly for red stderr output. It takes very little 
tint to be distinct from a white background. I have set my custom configuration 
to try this out.

Cutting code is a different issue. As I said above, I think custom functions 
are needed. One could only cut code. Another could add '>>> ' and '... ' before 
input lines, for pasting into docstrings. Another could add '# ' before output 
lines, for pasting into messages in a form that readers could recut and paste 
into an editor.

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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue7676>
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