[IPython-dev] embedding ipython

[Gael Varoquaux]

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 01:41:25AM -0700, Fernando Perez wrote:
> Currently we have the 'small and light' ipythonx widget that Gael
> wrote and the more featureful wxipython that Laurent wrote, but these
> share very little.  Having someone work on a Wx-based tool that gets
> the best of these and is developed on the updated apis we now have
> would be fantastic.

I have been following very lightly what is going on in the IPython world
with regards to front end and interactive use. I must say that I am very
excited by what I hear. It looks like you guys are finally opening the
road to a solid architecture and well-designed GUI applications using
IPython. 

If someone is going to set off to write a newer Wx frontend, I think that
the best way to do it would be to take the current one, 'carve out'
anything that is not purely wx-related and throw it away, to replace it
with the same core than the currently-developped Qt work (and maybe
eastablish a link with the web projects that Ondrej was mentioning). 

I had to go through 'interesting' hoops to get the right 'feeling' for an
interactive frontend without any threads (for instance instant updates to
the screen as the code was printing messages). The new developments 
will enable to avoid these workarounds. Some of the Wx code with timers
and 'wx.Yield' can thus probably go away, although I don't know the new
archicture and can't really invest time to give an educated opinion.

The Wx-related code for keyboard events processing, cursor movement, and
printing to screen is probably useful, on the other hand.

So I would say: hack with no restriction, rip my old code to pieces,
there is no point having legacy and hacky code lying around when we can
do much better. I will take no offence in having this code fully
re-written.

Cheers,

Gaël