[IPython-dev] Status of printing in the notebook

[Mark Voorhies]

On Tuesday, January 31, 2012 01:09:03 pm Brian Granger wrote:
> Mark,
> 
> Sorry it has taken a few days to get back to you about this.  There is
> a lot of activity on the notebook right now and I am having a tough
> time keeping up (even though I am working on it full time!).
> 
> First, I will fix the notebook printing hopefully today, maybe early tomorrow.
> 
> On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 6:22 PM, Mark Voorhies <mark.voorhies at ucsf.edu> wrote:
> > I just started using the notebook yesterday (following an upgrade to Firefox 9)
> > and it's awesome -- so much so that I'm switching to it for everyday work and
> > am planning to teach from it in April.
> >
> > One thing I would like to hack on is an equivalent to the qtconsole's "export
> > with inlined images" (xhtml+svg / html+inlined png) function (so that I can
> > save/e-mail finished work as a single file with no dependencies).
> 
> Yes, we *really* would like to have this capability and are more than
> willing to help you get started.  Here is a few points:
> 
> * The IPython.nbformat.v3 subpackage has an infrastructure for
> notebook readers/writers.  We currently have one for .json and .py
> files.  This is the place to create one for exporting to HTML.
> * Exporting to raw HTML is not quite possible.  The reason for this is
> that we use a couple of Javascript libraries:  MathJax for rendering
> latex embedded in the HTML, CodeMirror for formatting the code areas
> with syntax highlighting, and A Markdown parser that converts Markdown
> to HTML.  We will have to figure out substitutes for these JS
> libraries in the HTML export.
> * There are two possible ways of generating raw HTML:
> 
> 1) First export to reST and then use rst2html to get to the HTML.
> Some benefits to this, but the downside is that raw Markdown/HTML
> cells would get lost in the process (although I think that reST
> suports raw HTML inclusion.  Also, this would make it more difficult
> to control exactly what the HMTL looks like (IOW use our current CSS
> styling).
> 2) Use a templating library to export directly to HTML.  I think this
> is very worth pursuing as a first line of attack.  The would allow you
> to simply recreate the right HTML structure with the proper id/classes
> and then inline our CSS.  It would give you exactly the same look as
> we have now.  We would still need to figure out how to handle MathJax,
> CodeMirror and Markdown though.
> 
> I imagine that in the long run we will support both of these routes.
> Once we have the writers in place in IPython.nbformat.v3, it will be a
> simple matter of incorporating them into the notebook server.
> 
> Here is a github issue where we should continue this discussion:
> 
> https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/860
> 
> Fernando even has a draft reST exporter implemented.  Let us know if
> you have questions.

Thanks!  I'll watch for the notebook printing commit and chime in on
the issue once I have time to start outlining/hacking -- probably this
weekend.

--Mark

> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Brian
> 
> > The print window circa a50ac36bd554 looks like the right starting point (it
> > would just need inlining of the css and images), but it looks like this version
> > was scrapped when the wijmo menus were added and that there now may be
> > different ideas for printing (https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/1292).
> >
> > So -- is this a good time to start working on this sort of inlining (and, if so,
> > which code should I be looking at) or would it be better to wait for the next
> > print window revision (and is there an issue/PR that I should be watching
> > for this)?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Mark
> >
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> 
> 
> 
>