Hi all, As you may know, this summer we have been working on a new two process IPython that has a beautiful Qt frontend GUI and a ZMQ based messaging layer between that GUI and the new IPython kernel. Many thanks to Enthought for funding this effort!
We are currently in the process of adding GUI event loop integration to the ipython kernel so users can do interactive plotting like they can with the regular ipython. You may also remember that last summer we implemented a new PyOs_InputHook based GUI integration for the regular ipython. This has not been released yet, but all of this will be released in the upcoming 0.11 release. I am emailing everyone because we see that there is a need for all of us to agree on two things: 1. How to detect if a GUI application object has been created by someone else. 2. How to detect if a GUI event loop is running. Currently there is code in both ETS and matplotlib that fails to handle these things properly in certain cases. With IPython 0.10, this was not a problem because we used to hijack/monkeypatch the GUI eventloops after we started them. In 0.11, we will no longer be doing that. To address these issues, we have created a standalone module that implements the needed logic: http://github.com/ipython/ipython/blob/newkernel/IPython/lib/guisupport.py This module is heavily commented and introduces a new informal protocol that all of use can use to detect if event loops are running. This informal protocol is inspired by how some of this is handled inside ETS. Our idea is that all projects will simply copy this module into their code and ship it. It is lightweight and does not depend on IPython or other top-level imports. As you will see, we have implemented the logic for wx and qt4, we will need help with other toolkits. An important point is that matplotlib and ets WILL NOT WORK with the upcoming release of IPython unless changes are made to their respective codebases. We consider this a draft and are more than willing to modify the design or approach as appropriate. One thing that we have not thought about yet is how to continue to support 0.10 within this model. The good news amidst all of this is that the quality and stability of the GUI support in IPython is orders of magnitude better than that in the 0.10 series. Cheers, Brian PS: If you are curious, here is a bit of background on the issues related to the PyOS_Inputhook stuff: http://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/ipython-dev/2010-July/006330.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sell apps to millions through the Intel(R) Atom(Tm) Developer Program Be part of this innovative community and reach millions of netbook users worldwide. Take advantage of special opportunities to increase revenue and speed time-to-market. Join now, and jumpstart your future. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-atom-d2d _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
