[IPython-dev] New GUI integration in IPython

[Fernando Perez]

Hey Gokhan,

On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 11:56 AM, Gökhan Sever <gokhansever at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 1-) No more auto explicit numpy.core and matplotlib.pyplot load into the
> visible namespace right? This was a handy functionality to make quick tests,
> without a need for imports. I am sure this could be remedied putting proper
> statements somewhere into the config file, however with the switches removed
> how to instantiate IPython telling that I want matplotlib and numpy
> functionality in my shell.
>
> 2-) No thread options gone, each time we issue a plot directive, a show()
> must be explicitly stated. I will miss this lazy way of programming :)

No, when the dust settles, we'll have an interactive -pylab mode that
will work just like today, except without the mysterious
Ctrl-C-related crashes that are so easy to induce today with Wx.  It's
just that we are in the middle of major changes, and not all the
pieces have landed yet.

> 3-) What are the visible ad[dis]vantages of these changes to a simple user
> :) Those who don't integrate Ipython into a GUI application and changing
> backends very frequently.

- That Ctrl-C will actually do something sensible, without potentially
exploding in your face depending on the timing of your input regarding
what the GUI was doing.

- That tab-completion with Mayavi running should be less potentially
problematic.  There may still be attribute access bugs in the VTK
wrapping, but at least bugs in python's readline module that are
thread-related (we've been hit by that in the past) won't affect us
anymore.

- That you will be able to switch between Wx/GTK/Qt at runtime.  I can
imagine this being very useful for certain testing patterns.

Cheers,

f