> Now I don't know if I'm missing something painfully obvious, but
> having to bang out space-space-space-space for every indent is
> surely not going to be a win for usability ;-) Even if I am missing
> something, surely so will a lot of other users.

What *looks* painfully obvious to me is that Python doesn't force you
to use 4 spaces (or tabs) for indents :-)

> I use a readline completer that (in my opinion) does the Right Thing:
> at the start of the line, hitting TAB inserts a tab, otherwise it
> does completion. It also sets a history file, adds a couple of key
> bindings that I sometimes find useful, and wraps it all up in a
> class.

The "indent at beginning of line" thing sounds useful. The rest seems
to conflate the concept of a completer with the readline module itself.
Even though it's called rlcompleter, the rlcompleter module is
actually generic and could be used with other input schemes, so I don't
think it's the right place to set history options or key bindings.

In any case, you should post your patch as part of a separate issue, IMO.