[IPython-dev] Some sighs on using ipynb to make slides
Yuxiang Wang
yw5aj at virginia.edu
Wed Nov 12 11:54:15 EST 2014
First of all, sorry if this is not the right place to post this kind
of threads - I heard that ipython-user is being gradually deprecated
and moved to ipython-dev.
(Warning: random whining and sighs below)
First, I use Python in my research and I really love this language. A
million thanks to IPython, that life is much much easier with python,
compared to the idle console.
I am learning R recently and noticed the very nice R markdown feature
for reproducible research. Then I wondered what is the equivalent in
Python, which is actually the IPython Notebook (I never paid attention
on the "reproducible" part of ipynb before!)
Then, I realized the philosophy seems to be different: while R Studio
seems to be making the wheels for R presentation themselves, Python
works more as a glue and connected with reveal.js. I really love this
philosophy, however the drawback is that the users would have to take
care of the dependency. Conda was born for this purpose (non-Python
dependencies), but still, it has not supported pandoc + reveal.js +
miktex very well yet. On the other hand, R is really friendly even in
Windows, that if you use install.packages(), you can solve most of the
issue... They have a installr package available in Windows, to install
pandoc + miktex for making slides and PDF etc.
I happened to have tex + pandoc on my computer but just needed to
install reveal.js and (optionally) slideshow support in ipynb, so it
is all good; however, this procedure really seems a non-trivial
friction to prevent beginners from using this nice feature...
PS: a side question, are there any plans to merge ipynb slideshow
feature to the major release?
-Shawn
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