From: Guido van Rossum <guido@CNRI.Reston.VA.US>
Subject: IDLE 0.1 -- a Python IDE
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 22:20:49 GMT

At the conference I mentioned a few times that I was working on a
Tkinter-based IDE for Python.  I've decided to use the paradigm
"release early and often" for this piece of software (especially since
I don't expect I'll have much time to work on it), so version 0.1
(essentially a dump of my directory) is now sitting in the contrib
directory ftp.python.org.  Here's the full URL:

    ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/contrib/System/idle-0.1.tgz

And below is part of the README.  Note that as far as I can tell, the
only real dependency on 1.5.2 is the new code.py module; PSA members
can help non-PSA-members by making this file (and the new codeop.py
module) available.

idle.README:

    IDLE 0.1 - 10/16/98
    -------------------

    This is a *very* early preliminary release of IDLE, my own attempt at
    a Tkinter-based IDE for Python.  It currently has the following
    features:

    - multi-window text editor with multiple undo and Python colorizing
    - Python shell (a.k.a. interactive interpreter) window subclass
    - debugger
    - 100% pure Python
    - works on Windows and Unix (should work on Mac too)

    The main program is in the file "idle"; on Windows you can use
    idle.pyw to avoid popping up a DOS console.  Any arguments passed are
    interpreted as files that will be opened for editing.

    IDLE requires Python 1.5.2, so it is currently only usable for PSA
    members who have the latest 1.5.2 alpha release (a public beta release
    is due shortly).

    Please send feedback to the Python newsgroup, comp.lang.python.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)