Redesign Help => About IDLE, make it non-modal

[roseman]

BPO	24813
Nosy	@terryjreedy, @roseman, @csabella
PRs	bpo-24813: IDLE: Add icon to help_about #2335 [3.6] bpo-24813: IDLE: Add icon to help_about (GH-2335) #2359 bpo-24813: IDLE: Add default title to help_about #2366 [3.6] bpo-24813: IDLE: Add default title to help_about (GH-2366) #2369 bpo-24813: IDLE: Add bitness to About Idle title #2380 [3.6] bpo-24813: IDLE: Add build bitness to About Idle title (GH-2380) #2426 bpo-24813: update tagline to Integrated Development and Learning Envi… #2451 [3.6] bpo-24813: IDLE tagline is Integrated Development and Learning… #2461
Files	about.patch

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = 'https://github.com/terryjreedy'
closed_at = None
created_at = <Date 2015-08-07.04:19:41.973>
labels = ['expert-IDLE', 'type-bug', '3.10']
title = 'Redesign Help => About IDLE, make it non-modal'
updated_at = <Date 2020-06-07.23:01:48.196>
user = 'https://github.com/roseman'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2020-06-07.23:01:48.196>
actor = 'terry.reedy'
assignee = 'terry.reedy'
closed = False
closed_date = None
closer = None
components = ['IDLE']
creation = <Date 2015-08-07.04:19:41.973>
creator = 'markroseman'
dependencies = []
files = ['40409']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 24813
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 31.0
messages = ['248167', '248214', '250084', '250235', '296648', '296649', '296656', '296659', '296724', '296726', '296745', '296746', '296747', '296748', '296749', '296785', '296787', '296788', '296790', '296798', '296827', '296834', '296836', '296987', '296990', '296991', '297023', '297071', '297142', '297144', '370921']
nosy_count = 3.0
nosy_names = ['terry.reedy', 'markroseman', 'cheryl.sabella']
pr_nums = ['2335', '2359', '2366', '2369', '2380', '2426', '2451', '2461']
priority = 'normal'
resolution = None
stage = 'test needed'
status = 'open'
superseder = None
type = 'behavior'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue24813'
versions = ['Python 3.10']

Linked PRs

• gh-69001: Replace maintainer email in IDLE credits #129588
• gh-69001: Convert links to more usable buttons #129591
• [3.13] gh-69001: Replace maintainer email in IDLE credits (GH-129588) #129713
• [3.12] gh-69001: Replace maintainer email in IDLE credits (GH-129588) #129714
• [3.13] gh-69001: Convert links to more usable buttons (GH-129591) #130338
• [3.12] gh-69001: Convert links to more usable buttons (GH-129591) #130339

[roseman]

No reason for it to be modal. Especially on OS X (where it really isn't...)

[terryjreedy]

I am broadening this to include re-evaluation of everything under Help. There are other issues for search on config.

[terryjreedy]

Or we can broaden this in the other direction, to redesign AboutDialog.

[roseman]

Have attached about.patch, which changes the about dialog to no longer be modal, as well as does a substantial redesign, where the various help texts are displayed within the dialog itself, rather than launching (further modal) new windows.

Note: this new dialog works on both Tk 8.4 and 8.5+

[terryjreedy]

The proposed patch does several things that can be considered independently.

1. Give the 'title' parameter a default value 'About IDLE'. Instead, add the python/IDLE version, as done for IDLE doc in help.py. (In both cases, one might wonder why title is a parameter rather than being calculated within __init__. Perhaps an example of YAGNI.)

2. Make About IDLE non-modal. The addition of show(), _destroyed(), and changes in AboutDialog.close() are part of this. Modal seems standard, at least on Windows. What about other systems?

Mozilla FireFox and Thunderbird are obnoxiously semi-modal. Steam launcher is fully modal, with an icon added to the Taskbar, so one can easily find the window to close it. Any patch must make sure this happens. Clicking About Steam menu entry a second time lifts the first window to view. The patch imitates this.

To me, the main justification to go non-modal is that About IDLE opens documents in custom read-only windows rather than in a browser. README is one that one might want to keep open for awhile. Ditto for a future Roadmap file.

3. Add an icon with code based on the commented out code we removed (see lines with 'logofn', self.picture, and labelPicture). Yes, but we should try using the better looking "idle_48.png" with tk 8.6.

4. Change from white on medium gray to black on light gray. I might also try the standard black on white. Or black on python yellow. If we do A. below, the background should work with the blue link tagging.

5. I believe all 6 of the current linked documents are pre-loaded. I think this unnecessary as they are generally ignored. Load on demand is fine.

6. Documents are displayed in a new read-only Text that is part of the dialog itself. If we went in this direction, I would want to first try using the new TextviewFrame. But I think it better to open textviews non-modally so one can keep a document around after closing AboutIDLE. I think this will be more true if/when we switch to tabbed notebooks or the equivalent.

A. What the patch does not do is switch from buttons to blue-underlined links, as I have discussed elsewhere, nor do other rearrangements and changes. I want to move What's New to the top, move the Python license and copyright to the bottom, and remove Python credits. The idle-dev email must be replaced with a link to the idle-dev subscription page, as spam (which continues) prompted a switch to subscription required. This will be a separate issue.

[terryjreedy]

Cheryl, I suggest to start with any of 1, 3, and 4. My preference is 3. To be sure of avoiding merge conflicts, I would do one at a time. Narrowly focused PRs should be quick to review, test, and merge.

[csabella]

I submitted a PR for #3.

In Mark's patch, he had moved the existing text, email, docs, etc to column 1 instead of column 0 for better looking alignment. I can add that part of the redesign, but for now I just added the icon.

[terryjreedy]

I experimented with how the icon looks with different backgrounds, for point 4. Because the paper holes are transparent, white is bad, proposed light gray okay, black is good. Overall white on black is better than white on current dingy gray, so I consider making the background darker rather than flipping colors a possibility. I would suggest using user's color scheme (which has be requested for dialog in general) except that icon on white looks so poor. The htest makes experimenting easy. If you get to 4, give your opinion.

Another option would be to redo the two files. They are private copies and I believe not used otherwise.

[terryjreedy]

New changeset d352d68 by terryjreedy (csabella) in branch 'master':
bpo-24813: IDLE: Add icon to help_about (bpo-2335)
d352d68