[IPython-dev] Notebook format "incompatible" changes

[Nathan Goldbaum]

On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 10:37 AM, Matthias Bussonnier <
bussonniermatthias at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Carlos,
>
> TL:DR; at the end.
>
> With the notebook format v4, the way notebooks are written on disk will
> change.
> After now some time with v3, we know that a few things could have been
> done better
> or in a more general way, thus we improved the notebook format.
>
> Once 3.0 and 2.4 are released this shouldn't change much for the end user.
> I'll go over some of the changes in the notebook format and their reasons,
> but you
> should read the IPep for all details.
>
>
> Get rid of python specific names.
> pyin, pyout, pyerr are renamed input input, output, and error (roughly,
> read IPep for exact names).
>
> Uniformise jpg/png/text keys in output to be a mimetype.
> You can now store application/x-pdf or doc/microsoft-word in a notebook.
> If the frontend now how to read it, it will do something with it i suppose.
> It remove a lot of special casing.
>
> Get rid of worksheets, almost nobody use it, and there are other smarter
> way to
> store them if we wanted to.
>
> Text cells had their text under the 'text' key, and code cell under
> 'source'.
> Which is a bit silly, as it forces you to do some special casing where not
> necessary.
>
> Heading cell are now gone (from the file format), Technology evolve fast,
> and we can
> now detect the #*n in markdown cell and convert properly to LaTeX, and add
> anchor
> in nbviewer.
>
> More importantly, we know have a jsonschema that describe the format.
> So we can validate the notebook, and know that for example, a prompt number
> is either null, or a number. v3 was implicitly allowing '*' (star), which
> would happened
> if you were saving while cell are running, which took by surprise both us
> and external
> library where the conversion of some notebook made crashes. This include
> also security risk.
> Which I won't develop, cause I won't develop, but those who know know I
> love javascipt
> injection, and you can do nasty things on known websites. By insuring the
> type of each field
> of the notebook you lower the attack area, and protect FooBar corp user
> from attacks
> even if FooBar corp does not really respond to you when you do responsible
> disclosure and
> finally give up.
>
> I won't describe "All the things", but you see the big picture.
> It's better, faster, stronger.
>
> TL;DR:
>
> Wat ? You don't know ?! I've heard that IPython notebook format v3 might
> have been responsible
> for the death of a huge number of kittens due to developers banging their
> head on their desk.
> It is also probable that the need of extra computing power to run more
> test because of it's complexity
> is in part responsible for global warming. Also the new format prevent the
> use of %pylab that kills
> the endangered species of newbies. The naming convention was also really
> strange for php
> coders that don't understand the py prefixes.
>
> As we like kittens, newbies, developers, php coders (but not php itself
> [1]), and dislike
> global warming we decided to fix that.
>
> It also comes as ipynb v4+  that have a 5.5 inches screen, and we plan to
> jump from v8 to v10
> directly. We also removed touch-id from metadata so that police cannot
> force youth unlock your
> ipynb.
>
> Hope that shine a light on a few of the reason and what will change.
> Tell us if you have any more questions.
>

You don't mention it here, but nbformatv4 also includes the autoscroll
behavior for a cell as part of the notebook metadata, meaning no more
resetting autoscroll and issue 2172 can be fixed!

https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/2172


>
>
> Cheers,
> --
> M
>
> [1]: But MinRK Love Javascript.
>
>
>
>
>
> Le 2 nov. 2014 à 18:49, Carlos Córdoba <ccordoba12 at gmail.com> a écrit :
>
>  Hi,
>
> Could you explain a bit more what this change is about?
>
> Cheers,
> Carlos
>
>  El 01/11/14 a las 13:01, Brian Granger escribió:
>
> Matthias,
>
> Thanks for posting here about these changes!
>
> And thanks to the whole team (esp Min) for working on all of this!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Brian
>
> On Sat, Nov 1, 2014 at 3:12 AM, Matthias Bussonnier<bussonniermatthias at gmail.com> <bussonniermatthias at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Hello Jovyans and other beings from Jupyter galilean moons system,
>
>
> I'm writing to you to warn that on Monday (probably morning) a relatively
> important change
> in IPython will land on master. In particular it does change the notebook
> structure quite a bit.
>
> Cf https://github.com/ipython/ipython/pull/6045 for more information.
>
> As nothing is ever perfect, please do back-up your notebooks before
> upgrading. With this new update,
> saved notebook of this new of IPython version won't be compatible with
> older IPython anymore, nor will nbviewer be able to render them.
>
> The new notebook format will be back-ported on older (2.x) version of
> IPython and the new notebook format
> will be supported on nbviewer, we will just need a few days to port all the
> changes.
>
> There is of course be a way to manually downgrade the notebook from v4 to v3
> using nbconvert.
>
> Eventually the more adventurous can test the branch this week-end.
>
> As usual, be prepared for data loss and bugs, so update your git branches,
> refresh submodules, clear your browser caches, roll up your sleeves, and
> send bug reports.
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Matthias
>
>
>
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