[IPython-dev] notebook questions

[Jason Grout]

On 9/16/11 3:37 PM, Chris Kees wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I updated my source on the notebook after I read Fernando's post. Nice
> work! Couple of questions:
>
> Is there a way to use reST in the text boxes? It seems like it sort of
> works but doesn't get the ::
>
> If I put the notebook safely inside our firewall, would it be
> reasonable to just let 5-10 people use the same server or do you
> foresee problems down the road? I've set up a sage server partly for
> that purpose, but having the ipython notebook available could have
> some advantages. For example, we're running a computational mechanics
> seminar where it would be nice to share some simple mpi programs, say
> in the 8-16 processor range. I don't think we can do that in sage yet,
> right?

(answering the Sage question here...) What do you mean when you say 
"share some simple mpi programs"?  Do you mean running the mpi programs 
from the command line, or sharing the C code files, or using mpi4py to 
run the programs?  If you can do it in python or on the command line, 
you can likely do it in Sage.  Feel free to email the sage-support list; 
I'm sure we can help you there.



>
> In the docs, it talks about the python roundtrip not being guaranteed.
> What about a sage round trip capability for the notebooks?

I think that might be possible, though it would require ipython being 
able to have "text cells" with arbitrary html, rather than just 
markdown.  The Sage notebook format looks something like:

arbitrary html

{{{
input
///
output
}}}

arbitrary html

{{{
input
///
output
}}}

arbitrary html

etc.

Of course, sage-specific things like interacts wouldn't work.  (However, 
over the summer we've written a version of interacts that is independent 
of Sage and relies instead on the new ipython messaging protocol; it's 
part of the single-cell server project: 
http://utmost.aimath.org/#august-2011.)

Thanks,

Jason

--
Jason Grout