On 13 Nov 2018, at 09:51, Bev in TX <countryon...@gmail.com> wrote: ________________________________ > On Nov 12, 2018, at 5:50 PM, Terry Reedy <tjre...@udel.edu> wrote: > > For me, open (command-O) opens 'Documents'. I presume it should be easy > enough to move into a 'py' subfolder.
The whole point is for Idle -> File -> Open (or command-O) to automatically open to a specific folder. Bev in TX Thank you, Bev in TX for clarifying my question. That is indeed what I seek. My course has proved cumbersome every time a student created a new program in class, since they would have to change folders. And when I got to working with data files, I ended up with a little punt to avoid having to specify a complete path name to get to a workable directory. My students are not programmers. I have English majors, Education majors, and students in their first year at a University. I won't say they are completely computer-illiterate, they can use a browser well enough. But I expect none of them to have ever seen the command line, so I really don't want to go that route. As far as activating IDLE on this Windows 10 system, I go down to the search bar at the bottom left, type 'IDLE', and then up comes a list of various installations we have lying around, including 2.7, 3.4, and 3.6 versions. I have them just select the 3.6 version from the list to launch IDLE. I don't consider that quite the same as using a 'shortcut', since we are not clicking on any icon on the desktop. I am not on the campus-wide labs right now, so I cannot really say much further -- and I haven't tried right-clicking on those items to see if configuration options show up, to talk to the %AppData% path, etc. The Penn State computer labs are networked -- each computer has a C: drive, which I presume might be local to each machine -- but in any case, I think it is read-only to the students. And since they could easily sit down at a different machine on any day, I wouldn't want to rely on any configuration file or anything on the C drive anyway. There is a networked U: drive (for users) that is campus wide, which is useful. There is also a virtual V: drive, which simply maps to each individual's folder set aside for them on the U: drive. That place would be ideal for my purposes as a place to save code and data files. But the default directory is somewhere else. I would have to get back on campus before I can quote exactly, but wherever it is a readonly file space that's not the Desktop or My Documents, or who knows what. I'd preferably like to reset the default to the V: drive (or even create a Python folder on that virtual V: drive). And the real challenge is to come up with the simplest solution that I can explain or show to first-time programming students in under a minute, which therefore does not involve the command-line interface. I don't want to scare half the students away in the very first class, just trying to configure their development environment. If that's impossible, then I guess I'll have to fire a note off to the university tech support requesting them to play with that "Start In" option through %AppData%, or whatever it was. Roger Christman Pennsylvania State University -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
