[IPython-dev] Some sighs on using ipynb to make slides

Yuxiang Wang yw5aj at virginia.edu
Wed Nov 12 20:19:53 EST 2014


0) Thank you Thomas and Ivan! Those really help. And it's great to
know that we are moving to mistune!

1) What I was trying to express is actually now, Python packages
generally (more than IPython) rely a lot on non-python dependencies,
thus making it a pain for users (especially entry-level) to configure
the environment. For example, if I'd like to use IPython Notebook to
make a slide, I would need to google the solutions and install pandoc,
miktex, reveal.js, and of course git on the way. Once I figured it out
it sounds cool to me, but this is a major factor to lower Python's
popularity as a scientific tool... I feel that most people using R is
because R Studio did a lot of these things for them.

2) But - as that said, it's more like "pure whining" because it takes
non-trivial effort to change this situation to such a huge ecosystem.
And the situation is changing - I think conda is there to solve these
issues (configuring Cython on 64-bit windows used to be such a pain,
but now it's much easier!). :)

3) Detailed questions - you mentioned the "(included) JS stuff", so
are we going to have an IPython distribution with reveal.js included?

Thanks again for all your responses! And thanks for approving me to
post stuff like this here. A community is more than a technical Q&A
place - there's emotional support to know that I'm not all alone, ha!

-Shawn


On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 7:12 PM, Thomas Kluyver <takowl at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Shawn,
>
> I think it's OK to post this kind of thing here.
>
> In the next release, we'll be using a Python package (mistune) to convert
> Markdown to HTML, so pandoc won't be a requirement (it will still be
> required if you want to convert to LaTeX - that's not something we can
> practically solve). So hopefully at that point you should be able to make
> slides with just Python and (included) JS stuff.
>
> There are actually two slideshow features: nbconvert can export a static
> copy of the notebook as a reveal.js presentation - this is already part of
> IPython - and you can use Damian's live_reveal [1] extension to display
> live, editable notebooks as slides. We're supportive of the latter, but I
> don't think we'll merge it in - we're trying to slim the project down and
> make extensions easier to use, not assimilate lots of things.
>
> [1] https://github.com/damianavila/live_reveal
>
> Best wishes,
> Thomas
>
> On 12 November 2014 08:54, Yuxiang Wang <yw5aj at virginia.edu> wrote:
>>
>> 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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>
>
>
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-- 
Yuxiang "Shawn" Wang
Gerling Research Lab
University of Virginia
yw5aj at virginia.edu
+1 (434) 284-0836
https://sites.google.com/a/virginia.edu/yw5aj/



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