[pyKDE] Eric3: Improving the shell.

[Joshua Gilbert]

I gave it a go at writing the code myself, but I got lost, I can't
find where the event is actually handled. To trace execution I'm
running eric.py (eric-snapshot-20050917) in eric (Debian testing).

 Anyway, here are my points.

 * Replace it with IPython?
IPython rocks. Awesome shell, very interactive and it provides a bunch
of profiles that can be very handy. http://ipython.scipy.org/

 * Can't paste more than one line
Shame. Makes things harder than they should be

 * Can't select with shift+<arrow keys>
Annoying. Eric just moves over without selecting anything.

 * Middle click paste or typing should move focus to the current prompt
Instead of just overwriting the history. I don't mean the actual
history, I mean what's visible in the shell.

 * Ctrl-c should kill the current line Instead it does nothing.

* Can't alter values in the code that's currently running.    test.py:
 -----------------------------------
 h = 5
 print 'break here'
 -----------------------------------
 Now fire up eric, run the debugger and break at the second line. Try
this in the shell:
 >>> h
 5
 >>> h = 6
 >>> h
 6

 * <arrow button up> doesn't match partials like my readline settings say to.
So eric doesn't use readline. Already knew that. But still, the
functionality is staggeringly useful. Use case:
 >>> [x / 2.0 for x in range(10) if x % 2 == 0]
 [0.0, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0]
 >>> h
 6
 >>> [<up arrow>
 results in
 >>> h

 That's frustrating. Yes, this case was simple. In real usage I have
lots in my history. Being able to search over some subset rather than
the whole history makes things a lot faster. Especially when you're
repeating some long sequence of actions to get some code to work
right. Yes, you could define a function, but that requires that you
expect it to not work. Also doesn't help when you're dealing with long
obscure lines that you just need to change a little bit.

 Again, I'm willing to help implement these features and fixes. But I
need help, I don't see how to hack the shell code yet. A standalone
version of the shell  would be very useful (an app with only the
shell) as it would cut down on the depth and breadth of the problem. I
tried, but I'm not familiar enough with pykde and friends to get it
done.


Thank you,
Josh.