I seem to have anticipated some of your expansion, but I note this:  while Raymond's first post could be interpreted as suggesting a new IDLE feature, with its own PIP menu with multiple options, I immediately said it should be a standalone module that IDLE starts in a separate process, with one menu entry and a few lines of code, just as with turtledemo.

Putting the module (or package) in idlelib defines it as private and subject to change.  I can repeat that in the package itself. The public interface will be "click on menu entry 'Run PIP".  If it were moved to pip, the internal IDLE change should just be to change 'idlelib.pipgui' to 'pip.pipgui' (or whatever).

I have not decided whether test_pipgui should be added to test or subsumed under test_idle by being added to idle_test.  Do you or Nick have an opinion?