Re: [Visualpython-users] re: Distribution

--On Thursday, March 14, 2002 12:30 AM -0500 art...@rs... wrote:

> I am most defintely *not* mistaken.  If I open regular IDLE after having
> downloaded VPython on a look see basis, even *after* having uninstalled it
> I will forever more be getting the VPython top level help index when I do
> Help>Python Documentation

Ah. I had misunderstood your earlier comments. You are correct, and you can 
reasonably consider this a "sin". (I thought you were complaining that one 
could no longer get to the Python documentation due to insertion of the 
VPython documentation.) It would indeed be better (in the current context) 
for the VPython uninstall to rename Python.html to index.html. I'm not 
quite sure how to do that, and had piously hoped that the exact sequence 
you describe would not be common nor particularly onerous. Clearly this 
pious hope was not true in your case. More below on the sinning....

> And it can be avoided by changing a
> single letter.
>
> In EditorWindow.py at the line:
>
>         fn = os.path.join(fn, os.pardir, os.pardir, "Doc", "index.html")
>
> change index.html to vindex.html.

This approach was indeed considered, but this seemed a "sin" against Open 
Source manners (there are sins, and sins). What is temporarily called 
"idle_VPython" is actually an early cut of the ongoing idlefork project, 
whose goal is to become the standard Idle. It seemed proper to try as much 
as possible NOT to modify idlefork, so that those who want to track its 
progress could continually install newer versions and still have things 
work properly. As I said, "This kludge may well go away when current major 
work is completed by Stephen Gava to make IDLE configurable."

> By directing folks for example to the Numeric site, they have the
> opportunity to better appreciate and understand it as a project separate
> and distinct from VPython, in which a number a very bright folks have and
> continue to contribute efforts that benefit many of us  - most certainly
> the VPython user.
>
> Or find some other way to acknowledge with more overt appreciation the
> Numeric backbone of VPython because I *do* think it is not given an
> adequate, well-mannered nod of debt and appreciation in the distribution
> as it stands.

Numeric is prominently featured as a separate entity on the VPython 
documentation page, there is a link there to the Numeric web site (though I 
just noticed that we need to update that link, as there is now a 
redirection in place), and the full documentation for Numeric is included. 
What more could we do to acknowledge our debt in an adequate, well-mannered 
way?

> As to any other points I was in good faith and with best intentions
> trying to make - I pass it as a losing battle.

Not entirely losing: I acknowledged that we should archive older 
installers, and will try to do that in the future. And it's useful that you 
question the details of the documentation path, though I hope you see that 
what was done was an attempt to offset one "sin" against another rather 
than a sinister conspiracy.

Bruce Sherwood