[SciPy-Dev] SciPy Central in GSoC 2013

[Surya Kasturi]

On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 4:43 PM, Andreas Hilboll <lists at hilboll.de> wrote:

> >     >> 2. Integrating with Content Management System
> >     >
> >     > While this is nice, I think we should try to focus. What I would
> think
> >     > is more important for SPC would be a IPython Notebook integration.
> >     Like
> >     > having a "download notebook" link for each item.
> >
> >     +1 for Ipython notebook integration. Also, submissions of Ipython
> >     notebooks should be accepted (and not just as attachments, but
> >     rendered).
> >
> > Actually I heard of IPython but never looked into it clearly.. Will go
> > through it now. As far as I know its an web-based python console.. with
> > lots of features. So, using it helps us run snippets directly on the
> > site.. is that right?
>
> Not necessarily. IPython is an interactive Python shell. The Notebook is
> a web-based frontend for this, with the possibility to do inline
> plotting etc.
>
> What I meant in the scope of SPC is just providing support for the
> Notebook fileformat. This means that
>
> a) It should be possible to submit Notebook files as new entries (as
> suggested by Pauli)
>
> b) It could be possible to view items as rendered Notebook (as suggested
> by Pauli). I personally don't think this is so important; it might be
> enough to provide a link to the rendered Notebook on nbviewer.ipython.org.
>
> c) It should be possible to download an item in Notebook format.
>
> d) I'm strictly against actually running IPython Notebook on the SPC
> server, so that means im in favor of no snippet-running on the server.
>
> Cheers, Andreas.
>

I just had a look into IPython notebook.. My first impressions

1. Its great if someone is writing tutorials and want to share (SciPy
cookbook can be migrated to it)
2. since all the data is just in 1 single file.. maintenance is quite low
but readability is also quite low.

The below are the possible ways I think we can support .ipynb files in spc

1. users can upload them on some X hosted environment (gists for example)
and submit the url in spc. Now,
     1.a) we can direct them to nbviewer with this url
     1.b) we should provide ipynb rendering

2. we should be able to host .ipynb file like .py (snippets),
     2.a) render them on the site as 1.b)
     2.b) provide users a url for files which can be rendered on nbviewer

my choice would be a mix of the above two!.. support both of them.

We can build a submission form and ask users to provide either url to
.ipynb files or submit the file itself.

In either cases, we can render it on our site (the question is how to. Do
we have any standardization IPython provides? -- I see some ipython API but
don't understand it as for now)

Or else, we can direct them to nbviewer in case if we don't want to support
rendering!

cheers,
surya
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