[IPython-user] two feature ideas

[Fernando Perez]

Ville Vainio wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-02-10 at 09:56 -0700, Fernando Perez wrote:
> 
> 
>>command is considered to be finished.  Right now, %edit is very serial: send 
>>code to editor, wait for it to return, execute the saved file.  Since I don't 
>>know how to make %edit communicate with an editor (not in a cross-platform, 
>>generic way), for execution of the edited code, this is just about the only 
>>solution.  But by giving up execution, what you want may be doable.  I'll see 
>>what I can do.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure whether it would be what you want, but can't you just poll
> the file that is being edited? In a separate thread if need be...

Mmh, no thanks.  I have already enough threading headaches as it is with the 
gtk/wx/tk support for matplotlib's guis.  IPython, in its current form, is NOT 
an IDE.

And if we can ever stop adding mini-features to it and can move over to 
actually cleaning it up (I've stopped promising, for fear of looking like more 
of a fool than I already do), it will be possible to _integrate_ it with other 
IDE-type systems, which is IMHO the right approach.

In fact, for this particular problem I very much like Alex Schmolck's 
solution.  It can be named eds, edsend, whatever, and act as a quick way to 
say 'send this file, at this line number, to my editor', without further 
complicating the (already unpleasant) magic %edit.  Since I'm a sucker, I'll 
probably still add the '-s' switch to %edit to do this, so users don't have to 
write customizations themselves.

Cheers,

f