===== Original message from Hubert Fitch | 17 Mar 2006:
I use the Idle shell GUI to write, edit, and run Python programs.
I do not run or use Python from the dos command line.
ipython might be a better choice.
http://ipython.scipy.org/
I have not been able to do any simple plotting
because I can't get matplotlib and Python to work together.
do you have required GUI toolkits installed?
http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/installing.html
see the "Windows GTK Quickstart" section on
http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/backends.html
but start using NumPy for numerics right away,
instead of Numeric or Numarray.