On Oct 15, 1:07 pm, Stef Mientki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Steve Phillips wrote: > > Hi All, > > I am just wondering what seems to be the most popular IDE. The reason > > I ask is I am currently at war with myself when it comes to IDE's. It > > seems like every one I find and try out has something in it that > > others don't and viceversa. I am in search for the perfect IDE and > > after many months of searching, I always come back to IDLE to do what > > I need to do. I want to use Komodo badly but the one issue I have with > > that is sometimes the auto-complete works and other times it doesn't. > > Even if I carbon copy a script. > > So what are the specs of the "perfect IDE" ? snip
I think the editors you see are too high-contrast in their color scheme. I look at PyCrust, etc., and NetBeans Java. The bold, plus italics, plus color, is too much. I know it's exciting to be recognizing patterns and changing fonts, but they overdo it, at least in these cases. If you're browsing code contrast is important, but if you're looking at one screen or two for an extended time, you'll pick out subtleties after a short time. I look, sorry all, at Google Groups for an example of mild color gradients. I see two different grays and three blues on the current screen alone. I could see that as being popular one day. As for keyboard action, the response time from a keystroke to the visual reaction, I like mine as fast as possible, lowest lag. I don't think that's necessarily as popular, or necessarily as important, especially if the IDE is written in Python. You might like to, for the step-through functionality, add a 'settrace' on every thread if possible, overriding the thread module if necessary. I would also have appreciated a step through in the ver. 2.6. 'multiprocessing' module, but that could get difficult, since each separate instruction pointer spawns a new process. It would be even more valuable, and even pedagogically instructive, if you could control what thread takes its turn next when you're running more than one. Keyboard shortcuts are one thing I like about my editor (the one I prefer), which has hardly any non-essential features at all (in contrast to emacs I understand). You can select shortcut groups and assign number keys. 'Bloodshed-Dev' did not overdo that one, since they are developing for multiple platforms, and the conventions vary considerably-- ctrl vs. alt, function keys, &c. Arrow-movement is emphasized in mine, with ctrl-arrow, alt-arrow, shift-arrow, all having functions, plus ctrl-tab for changing file displayed. The scope of the projects you're gearing to support is a variable-- you want fast startup times if the target projects are going to be small, but good browsing abilities if they are large. I haven't liked the default behavior when identifiers are found that can't be placed in a namespace, namely lumping them all together and sorting. 10 pixels vs. 12 can make a difference in overall look and feel in the icons in your browser, and if you have one week to your release date, I'd rather have an extra week into key response time, than in the icons. My $.02. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list