On 4/15/22, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwa...@gmail.com> wrote: > > The problem is that people run the installer, don't see a desktop > icon, and think nothing has been installed.
Such people need to learn how to use the start menu, where all of Python's shortcuts are installed in a folder named "Python <X.Y>". One can also press the Windows key and type "python" to get a filtered view of the application shortcuts. > Or they think the installer "is python", and run it over and over > again trying to "run Python". I'm not opposed to renaming the installer to something that makes it more obvious that it's only an installer. But, to put this in perspective, I think you're talking about a small number of people out of the millions of users who I presume install and use Python without a problem. It could be that thousands of people install Python and give up without complaining when they can't use it, but I doubt it. > If the installer, by default, created an IDLE desktop shortcut and a > cmd.exe shortcut that ran Python, I believe it would eliminate most of > those problems. The installed shortcuts are to IDLE (via "pythonw.exe") and "python.exe". IDLE is a graphical integrated development environment (shell, editor, debugger) that by default runs an interactive shell. The "python.exe" executable is a console (terminal) application that by default runs an interactive shell if its arguments do not specify a script file, -m module, or -c command to run. A console application is attached to a console session, a resource that's hosted by an instance of "conhost.exe" or (in a tab of Windows Terminal) "openconsole.exe". It connects to the console session via files on the ConDrv device (e.g. "\Device\ConDrv\Connect", "\Device\ConDrv\Input", "\Device\ConDrv\Output"). If an application executable is flagged as a console application, such as "python.exe", and no console session was inherited from the parent process, and the process wasn't spawned with the DETACHED_PROCESS flag, then the Windows base API automatically allocates and attaches to a new console session at startup during the initialization of kernelbase.dll. If an application executable is flagged as a graphical application, such as "pythonw.exe", then a console session is never inherited and never automatically allocated, but one can be manually allocated or acquired via AllocConsole() or AttachConsole(dwProcessId). -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
