[IPython-dev] Notebook webapp and HTML templates

[Matthew Turk]

Hi all,

This week at SciPy, Fernando and Min and I chatted a bit about using
the Notebook as to drive the yt ( http://yt-project.org/ ) web GUI.
We recently refactored our GUI to be forward-compatible with switching
out the execution process, and in such a way that widget commands are
API-compatible with the IPython notebook.    Refactoring our GUI
turned out to be a pretty worthwhile task on the whole, and keeping
the idea of switching to IPython was great inspiration.

The last time Brian and I exchanged emails about this (on this list)
back in March or April, there were basically two items that he
identified that would be necessary for us to utilize the full power of
the web notebook within our shell (and our domain-specific widgets and
so on ...) without having to interfere with IPython internals.

1) Allowing subclassing/extension of the webapp, so that new URL
handlers could be added.
2) Templating the HTML with Jinja2, such that either subclassing or
including the templates in other chrome could be possible, as
described in issue 1585.

Min suggested I write and see if these are still on the radar, and if
they are, if/how I could pitch in to help out with them.  Normally I
wouldn't write again so soon after the last exchange and so soon after
0.13 was released -- congratulations! -- but I figured that SciPy 2012
was a good inspiration to check in.  :)

Thanks,

Matt