2018-08-24 16:47 EDT, Konrad Förstner <[email protected]>:

> Beside the fact that this talk is it really funny, it raises a lot of
> issues that I can confirm from my experience: [...]
>

Hi everyone,

I realize there's been a lot of attempts already to solve this "hidden
state" problem at the software level, but I wonder if a "modal" notebook
could help.

It seems to me that those problems arise because notebooks are trying to
support "exploration/playing around" and "presentation" workflows from the
same interface. There is no reason the full history can't be kept, other
that it makes for a bad presentation; likewise, there is no reason to have
every bit of code in the notebook, other than it is necessary to be able to
run it again.

So maybe having a separate "exploration" mode where all cells are kept in
order since the last kernel reset, and a "presentation" mode where some of
those cells can be selected for presentation and the rest hidden would do
some good?

There would be no need for GitHub and similar services that can render
notebooks to show anything but the "presentation" view. But when I download
and open the notebook, I would be able to get to a chronological,
reproducible view if I choose to.

I do see some problems with this, mainly in that authors might not be aware
of the non-presentation cells they are including (might have private stuff,
or use a lot of space). It seems also a tad more complex (but less so than
using the history magics!). I wonder if something like this has been
attempted or exist in another software.

Cheers
-- 
Rémi

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