[IPython-dev] Qt console making great strides, please use it and let us know what works, what doesn't

[Fernando Perez]

Hi all,

now that our codebase is starting to settle down into the shape the
next release will look like, it would be great if we start getting
more feedback.  In particular, Evan Patterson has done a great job of
fine-tuning the Qt console so that it's a really useful tool for
everyday work, and while we've tried to be much more disciplined about
testing things now, the reality of GUI apps is that some things are
very difficult to test short of humans using them.

So if you would like to start using it, and reporting what doesn't
work either here or even better, on the bug tracker, that would be
great.  Evan today just merged a change that fixes what in my eyes was
one of the major usability issues left: when you moved out of a cell
you had already edited, you lost your unexecuted changes.  This could
be very annoying in practice, but now the console automatically
remembers these changes.  I think with this issue fixed, it makes for
a great environment to experiment and work in.  My favorite way to
start it is with this alias:

alias iqlab='ipython-qtconsole --paging vsplit --pylab'

and sometimes I'll add "inline" if I want inline figures (I'm working
on a patch to allow toggling of inline/floating figures at runtime,
but it's not ready yet).

So use it, pound on it, let us know how it goes.  We'd like this to be
really a production-ready tool when 0.11 goes out.

A big thanks to Evan for the great work he's done and being so
responsive, as well as Mark and others who have pitched in with the Qt
code.

And as always, a pull request is even better than a bug report!

Cheers,

f