In Idle, Mac tabs make editor status line disappear.

[andyharrington]

BPO	34864
Nosy	@terryjreedy, @taleinat, @ned-deily, @miss-islington
PRs	bpo-34864: Document two IDLE on MacOS issues. #10456 [3.7] bpo-34864: Document two IDLE on MacOS issues. (GH-10456) #10457 [3.6] bpo-34864: Document two IDLE on MacOS issues. (GH-10456) #10458 bpo-34864: warn if "Prefer tabs when opening documents" set to "Always" #10464 [3.7] bpo-34864: warn if "Prefer tabs when opening documents" set to "Always" (GH-10464) #11013 [3.6] bpo-34864: warn if "Prefer tabs when opening documents" set to "Always" (GH-10464) #11014 gh-77578: IDLE Help - let users control font size #6665
Files	with tabs.png

^{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 = <Date 2018-11-11.05:42:08.860>
created_at = <Date 2018-10-01.19:36:12.948>
labels = ['3.8', 'expert-IDLE', 'type-feature', '3.7']
title = 'In Idle, Mac tabs make editor status line disappear.'
updated_at = <Date 2019-10-17.04:58:11.211>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/andyharrington'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2019-10-17.04:58:11.211>
actor = 'ned.deily'
assignee = 'terry.reedy'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2018-11-11.05:42:08.860>
closer = 'terry.reedy'
components = ['IDLE']
creation = <Date 2018-10-01.19:36:12.948>
creator = 'andyharrington'
dependencies = []
files = ['47846']
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 34864
keywords = ['patch']
message_count = 31.0
messages = ['326822', '326844', '326846', '326976', '326993', '326995', '326997', '327024', '328797', '328828', '328888', '329659', '329660', '329661', '329662', '329664', '329665', '329666', '329675', '329710', '329712', '329714', '329717', '331272', '331274', '331277', '331740', '331889', '331933', '354829', '354830']
nosy_count = 6.0
nosy_names = ['terry.reedy', 'taleinat', 'andyharrington', 'wordtech', 'ned.deily', 'miss-islington']
pr_nums = ['10456', '10457', '10458', '10464', '11013', '11014', '6665']
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'fixed'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'enhancement'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue34864'
versions = ['Python 3.6', 'Python 3.7', 'Python 3.8']

[andyharrington]

Mac now puts multiple tabs inside of application window instead of starting a separate window (with some OS settings).

With just one file being edited in Idle (no tab line) the bottom line with the numerical cursor coordinates is visible. When there are multiple tabs (and the tabbing heading therefore) the bottom cursor coordinates are missing.

[terryjreedy]

I do not see this 64-bit 3.7.1rc1 (see bpo-34863) on 10.13.6 with, I believe, default settings.

Are you reporting multiple tabs as a bug, or a feature resulting from intentional settings? If the latter, this may be something the tcl/tk does not support properly. Ned and Tal, do either of you know anything about this?

In any case, is the status bar missing, or is the cursor position missing from the status bar.

[andyharrington]

This appears to be a system settings option in Mac OS Sierra set under the
Dock, "prefer tabs when opening documents". With that choice, when there
is the tab bar in an Idle edit window (more than one window superimposed,
with tabs) the the whole bottom line with the horizontal separator line
segment disappears: seems like no allowance is made for the vertical space
taken up by the tab bar at top. There is a workaround: turn off this OS
option, but unfortunate to need to do that, and the user has no warning
that it is necessary. I only noticed this when I switched to a new machine
and was doing initial diddling with the system options, and did not realize
that i was not setting it up as I had it on my previous machine.

Dr. Andrew N. Harrington
Computer Science Department
Graduate Program Director gpd@cs.luc.edu
Loyola University Chicago
207 Doyle Center, 1052 W Loyola Ave.
http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh
Phone: 773-508-3569
Dept. Fax: 773-508-3739
aharrin@luc.edu (as professor, not gpd role)

On Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 9:30 PM Terry J. Reedy <report@bugs.python.org>
wrote:

Terry J. Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> added the comment:

I do not see this 64-bit 3.7.1rc1 (see bpo-34863) on 10.13.6 with, I believe,
default settings.

Are you reporting multiple tabs as a bug, or a feature resulting from
intentional settings? If the latter, this may be something the tcl/tk does
not support properly. Ned and Tal, do either of you know anything about
this?

In any case, is the status bar missing, or is the cursor position missing
from the status bar.

----------
nosy: +ned.deily, taleinat

---

Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue34864\>

---

[taleinat]

Confirmed on macOS High Sierra 10.13.6, with "Prefer tabs when opening documents" set to "Always".

See attached screenshot with the macOS tabs; indeed the bottom bar is missing.

[ned-deily]

Interesting! I was not familiar with that system preference nor that it would just (sort of) work in IDLE; I'm presuming that there is nothing in IDLE that knows about this. I'm not sure whether Tk gets that behavior for free (because of the use of an underlying macOS API) or whether it is intended to be supported behavior. Or what would need to be done in IDLE to fully support it. Perhaps Kevin might be able to give some guidance from the Tk perspective.

Ah, I see that if the selected tab is an edit window rather than the IDLE shell window and then one uses the cursor to resize the window (grabbing the bottom right hand corner), the cursor location info reappears and then seems to behave as expected: disappears when selecting the shell tab and reappears when selecting the edit tab. Further, when opening yet edit window, the cursor info is missing on the new edit tab but still present on the previous edit tab; resizing the window again causes the cursor info to now appear in the newly edit tab. So all of this seems to be IDLE-specific.

[ned-deily]

One more time:

"Further, when opening yet edit window" should be "Further, when opening yet another edit tab (in the same IDLE window)"

[terryjreedy]

Optionally converting windows to tabs is an over-arching goal for IDLE. To do it with IDLE code, IDLE must create a frame (and keep a reference) but not a toplevel. I presume that the Mac window manager extracts the window title and frame from the window, discards the window, and puts the title and frame on a tab. Kevin, does tcl/tk know about or cooperate with this conversion?

IDLE's default editor size is configured as 40 lines of 80 characters. On my MacBook Air, the windows are actually 38 lines; that is all that fits between the title bar and taskbar. Additional windows overlap, but are moved to the right. If I set the window height to less than 38, say 30, the initial window does not fill the vertical space, showing some of the background beneath. Additional windows appear a bit down as well as to the right.

I found the setting under System Preferences Dock and more or less confirm Ned's report. It appears that the status bar is hidden rather than deleted. I set the initial window size to 36, 2 lines less than the actual maximum, hoping the status bar would remain in a larger window after opening a second window. No such luck. The size remains 36, with the bar hidden. For the editor windows, grabbing the vertical resize made the status appear and stay. For Shell, it disappeared either immediately or when tabbing away and back. Since Shell subclasses EditorWindow, I don't know why the difference.

The resolution to this issue from IDLE's viewpoint should be a new IDLE doc subsection 'IDLE on MacOS', probably under 'Help and Preferences'. It would explain differences from IDLE on Linux and Windows. Besides this issue, there is the single title bar, menu differences, and zoom behavior (horizontal expansion as well as vertical). Also, as far as I can tell so far (and someone correct me if this is wrong), only 1 instance of IDLE can run (for a given binary, at least), which means only 1 Shell. (On Windows, I can run multiple instances of a given binary, and I presume the same is true on non-Mac *nix.)

[wordtech]

The behavior outlined in the screenshot is, I believe, a component of the native Cocoa window that underlies Tk; it cannot be controlled or accessed from Tk. It's probably better to avoid altogether or re-implement somehow in IDLE.

[taleinat]

The search and replace dialogs are also broken by "Prefer tabs when opening documents" being active: they as separate tabs rather than a dialog window.