Hi.
No problem, I'm here to help. Yes I believe when you launch python from the command line, which is what you described, idle opens. The three greater signs are meant to indicate line breaks or something like that. I guess if you are sighted it would make more sense, but if you have little or no vision it would be very confusing.
Now if you just want to dash off a quick program, just write it in notepad and run it by typing the path of the file in the command line. The reason you need to do this is because if you run it by pressing enter on it, it will open quickly and then close, which is too fast for your screen-reader to read. When you run it from the command prompt, you can tell exactly what the script is doing. For example to run a program, type in C:\Users\Yourname\Pythonscript.py. Without the period after of course.
Now for EdSharp, just go to it on your start menu or desktop and press enter on it. You will have a blank page where you can write your code. First go to the menu bar and select python from the list of programming languages. Python is selected by default usually, but you should select python anyway just in case. Some others are c#, ruby, and a few others, but you don't need to worry about those right now. You probably know but python has indentation levels, in notepad it doesn't read these, you have to read line by line checking the indents manually. With EdSharp it says the indentation level as you type your code. For example, when you get to a point when you need to indent the first time, it will say level one when you press tab, and as you keep going level 2, 3, and so on. You will still need to check your indents in case you made a mistake, but you don't have to worry or guess at what indent level you are at now.
Hth.
Guitarman.
What has been created in the laws of nature holds true in the laws of magic as well. Where there is light, there is darkness, and where there is life, there is also death.
Aerodyne: first of the wizard order