[IPython-dev] [matplotlib-devel] IPython (new) + matplotlib report: happy news

Fernando Perez fperez.net at gmail.com
Tue Sep 14 14:58:14 EDT 2010


On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Anne Archibald
<aarchiba at physics.mcgill.ca> wrote:
> On 14 September 2010 11:08, Gökhan Sever <gokhansever at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 1-) When one downloads a script from the matplotlib gallery via an external
>> script (name it load_into_ipython or open_with_ipython) the contents of that
>> gallery script (or any python script) can be executed locally inside an
>> ipython session.
>
> Not to be difficult, but I should point out that allowing users to run
> code with one click, particularly if that code is from a wiki or other
> user-submitted gallery, is just asking for trouble. How long before
> someone submits "import os, shutil;
> shutil.deltree(os.environ['HOME'])"? Or sneaks it into some otherwise
> inoffensive script?

Very valid points.  I'm leaning more towards something like a
combination of (hopefully) a 'copy code' button on the MPL webpages
themselves, so users don't have to scroll/highlight a lot but would
still do paste, execute manually, and a special %mplexample magic.

This would only run examples from the mpl gallery (hardcoding the
path), would display the code to the  user first, and would ask for
confirmation before execution.  Since those html pages are built by
executing those same scripts, there's a layer of sanity already built
into it (the rmtree call would have already nuked the builder's home
directory in the build process if it had been there).  Showing the
code to the user and confirming execution before proceeding adds a
final chance for the person to check her parachute before  jumping off
the cliff.

Does that sound reasonable?

>> 2-) Matplotlib gallery might turn to an interactive environment where you
>> can execute the script from right within your browser and change parameters
>> in the same browser window. As far as I know mpl figures can now be drawn on
>> html canvas. This might for sure boost the number of matplotlib audience.
>
> Is there a sandboxed browser plugin? Or server plugin, depending on
> where you run the script?

This would have to be server-side, and code needs to be written.  Part
of our interest with this explicit separation of ipython kernel and
clients with a well-defined protocol is to make the above possible.
But we haven't written any of the code necessary to have a browser
client, and to serve code read from a sphinx-generated HTML page.
Gokhan, your patches will be welcome, the infrastructure is now ready
and waiting for you :)

Cheers,

f



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