As Terry said, the issue of Idle not starting by a .py file association was
raised in another thread. That parenthesis was mentioned to give context to
the documentation enquiry.  In my new 3.9 installation, I could find
idle.bat, but I had just been told by the Microsoft help engineer that it
was possible to make an association with a file type only by pointing to an
.exe file.  (I could find idle.exe in a 3.8 installation on a different
computer, buried deep in hidden AppData folders.)

This post was specifically about the documentation.  One of the
difficulties of a Python installation is that it is really difficult to
find where and how all the many and various strands of Python interact, how
the sources are linked into a structure [I grew up pre-Windows with
MS-DOS]. I was trying to find where the idle.exe was placed in the
installation, since Windows requires (apparently) an explicitly stated
folder/application.

So I went to the IDLE documentation page to find how IDLE was implemented
as a program, and how I might find "it", and where "it" was placed in the
folder structure in my new installation.
But those mechanics are not mentioned on that page.
So-  my post on documentation.

I apologise for the confusion.  However in the past, I had a similar
experience loading anaconda etc, where the files disappeared without trace
onto a hard drive. So I deleted the package (as best I can) because I don't
know what is happening.

On Thu, 8 Oct 2020 at 01:07, Terry J. Reedy <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:

>
> Terry J. Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> added the comment:
>
> I agree that the doc needs more, but I am closing this as a duplicate of
> #31329, which is specifically doc about starting IDLE.  You can still
> answer Paine's questions here if you want.
>
> File association: IDLE is not Python.  It is one of many Python-oriented
> editors and IDEs.  .py files are and by default should be associated for
> running with something that runs the file with python.exe.  On Windows,
> this is done via C:/Windows/py.exe.  The default version for double
> clicking is determined by a checkmark in the installer.
>
> The Windows installer does associate .py files with IDLE for editing: rt
> click, edit with IDLE ....
>
> idle.exe is not needed for starting idle.
>
> I don't know what you mean by 'source format'.  IDLE is written in
> Python.  The directory structure is mostly implementation detail not
> relevant to using IDLE.  File are described in idlelib/README.txt.  This
> might be mentioned in the doc.
>
> ----------
> resolution:  -> duplicate
> stage:  -> resolved
> status: open -> closed
> superseder:  -> Add idlelib module entry to doc
> type:  -> enhancement
> versions: +Python 3.10 -Python 3.9
>
> _______________________________________
> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> <https://bugs.python.org/issue41968>
> _______________________________________
>