Fred

Hi
I am always hearing people talking about GUI and IDLE stuff in programming. Would anybody mind explaining to me what these actually mean? And sort of what the difference is?!
Thanx

arod199113

i wouldnt say i know as much as anyone else in this forum
but IDLE(GUI) i would say is a compiler for python
if u have python installed on your computer just go to (under windows)
start\programs\python(2.0, 2.1, etc.)\Idle(GUI)
that will bring you to a window called "Python Shell"
python shell is just like the python command line
go to file\new window
that is where you wright you python programs in
you could write them in notepad though(just save it with a .py at the end) but you still have to have python installed to run the program

if there is anything else you need to know just ask and someone will get back to you

thechristelegacy

IDLE is the Python Intergrated Development Enviroment (IDE) which is basicly a tool that has all of a particular programming language's tools in one area. It's a powerful code formatter to make code better orginized durring writing, and it also can make calls to the Python compiler. It just takes everything you can do with the Python langauage and puts it all in one place. It's just adds a General User Interface (or GUI) on top of the Python commnand line.

A GUI is anything that isn't command based (aka the Windows Prompt, Bash, Midnight Commander, etc...). For Python there are serveral GUI Toolkits (librairies that you can use to build GUIs instead of just console applications). The standard GUI toolkit that comes with Python is Tkinter (based off of TCL and Tk), but a lot of people find the code cumbersome. There are also wrappers for GTK, OpenGL, wxWindows, qt, pygame, and a few other you might find when looking around.

Hope this answeres your questions

Fred

Perfect
Thanx

Dietrich

GUI = Graphical User Interface
the stuff you see in a typical window program like forms, buttons, labels, editboxes and so on.

IDE = Integrated Development Environment
usually a text editor that allows you to run and debug the programming code you have written. A good IDE has context sensitive help and code highlighting built in, and also highlights the line an error occured on.

al1986

As a side note, it's worth mentioning that 'IDLE' is a refernece to Eric Idle, one of the members of Monty Python. But I guess you Pythonistas knew that already!

Fred

Nope. I that is 100% new to mw. But I have to say, I never saw the monthy circus thingy...