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=====================
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Development version
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=====================
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This document describes in-flight development work.
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Redesigned IPython notebook user interface
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------------------------------------------
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(Add description & screenshots of the many changes to the notebook)
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Cell magics
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-----------
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IPython's ``%magic`` functions have been extended to let you change the meaning
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of a whole cell using the first line. For example, to time the execution of
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several statements::
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%%timeit x = 0 # setup
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for i in range(100000):
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x += i**2
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This is particularly useful to integrate code in another language, and cell
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magics already exist for shell scripts, Cython, R and Octave. Using ``%%script
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/usr/bin/foo``, you can run a cell in any interpreter that accepts code via
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stdin.
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Another handy cell magic makes it easy to write short text files: ``%%file
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~/save/to/here.txt``.
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To allow these features, the API for magic functions has been refactored and
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made more powerful (:ghpull:`1732`).
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Interactive tab completion for the Qt console
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---------------------------------------------
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(Add description & screenshots) (:ghpull:`1851`)
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Completer improvement
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---------------------
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One of the great feature of IPython is the ability to inspect live element and
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provide useful completion to the user, this one base of interactive
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exploration of data. To make this process even more user-friendly the completers
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of both the QTconsole and the Notebook has been reworked.
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The Qtconsole --gui-completion flag came with a new `ncurses` flavor, activated
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by default, which allows to cycle through the available completion by pressing
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tab, and to navigate the with the arrow keys.(:ghpull:`1851`)
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As part of the great refactoring of the notebook's JavaScript, the completer
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has been partially rewritten. Completions are now sourced both from object
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introspection and analyse of surrounding code, allowing to get a even limited
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completion on code not executed, or even while the kernel is busy.
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Notebook tooltip improvement
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----------------------------
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Being able to get non obstructive help is important whether you are a python
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beginner or a experienced developer learning new python library. This is the
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reason why the new tooltip that ships with the notebook get some new
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functionality.
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You can still invoked it after an opening bracket, or after a space following a
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comma in function argument (yes it forces you to be pep8 compliant), but
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several tab press in a row will now give different behaviour.
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You can discover this interactively one of the first introduction notebook, to
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see how to expand the tooltip size to see more of the docstring, prevent it
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from being dismissed and still see the kwargs list while typing function
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argument. Or finally sending the displayed help to the pager at the bottom of
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the screen to have a permanent help.
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Other new features
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------------------
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* **%install_ext**: A new magic function to install an IPython extension from
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a URL. E.g. ``%install_ext
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https://bitbucket.org/birkenfeld/ipython-physics/raw/default/physics.py``.
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* The ``%loadpy`` magic is no longer restricted to Python files, and has been
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renamed ``%load``. The old name remains as an alias.
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* New command line arguments will help external programs find IPython folders:
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``ipython locate`` finds the user's IPython directory, and ``ipython locate
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profile foo`` finds the folder for the 'foo' profile (if it exists).
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* The :envvar:`IPYTHON_DIR` environment variable, introduced in the Great
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Reorganization of 0.11 and existing only in versions 0.11-0.13, has been
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deprecated. As described in :ghissue:`1167`, the complexity and confusion of
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migrating to this variable is not worth the aesthetic improvement. Please use
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the historical :envvar:`IPYTHONDIR` environment variable instead.
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* The default value of *interactivity* passed from
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:meth:`~IPython.core.interactiveshell.InteractiveShell.run_cell` to
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:meth:`~IPython.core.interactiveshell.InteractiveShell.run_ast_nodes`
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is now configurable.
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Backwards incompatible changes
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------------------------------
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* The exception :exc:`IPython.core.error.TryNext` previously accepted
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arguments and keyword arguments to be passed to the next implementation
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of the hook. This feature was removed as it made error message propagation
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difficult and violated the principle of loose coupling.
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