[yt-dev] Request comments/vote on use of notebooks in yt docs

Sat Oct 26 09:09:12 PDT 2013

There seems to be enough utility in having both the notebooks and at least
some way of downloading pure python scripts.  On the one hand, the
notebooks are illustrative for both yt usage and for learning ipython
notebooks themselves.  As a teaching tool, they seem great.  On the other,
I think the primary usage of yt for analysis is through scripting and we
should try to preserve that notion and make these available as seeds for
new users looking to build their own scripts.  I think that presenting the
recipes with the notebook, but with a button to download as a script
nearby, would be an option that satisfies everyone.

Britton

On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 9:54 PM, Chris Malone <chris.m.malone at gmail.com>wrote:

> I'm +1 on this, with the possibility of providing also just the .py files
> from nbconvert for those that won't/can't use notebooks.
>
> Chris
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Sam Skillman <samskillman at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I think if we don't take this opportunity to use notebooks during this
>> major update to the documentation, we'll be kicking ourselves in about a
>> year for missing it.  I'd like to voice my support for the following layout:
>>
>> 1) Write the cookbook examples in a notebook, annotating it with comments
>> and reasoning in markdown cells. Use some amount of conventions for data
>> loading so that with minimal work users could change the path to the data
>> and run themselves.
>> 2) Display the notebooks in the docs
>> 3) Allow for download of both a stripped down (no images included) .ipynb
>> and nbconverted script.
>>
>> The neat thing is that now you have all these .ipynb files in the doc
>> repo. It would be stupid simple to then show people how to go to that
>> folder, launch yt notebook, you can then interactively execute the examples
>> after pointing to the data locations.  This would be really really nice in
>> my opinion.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Sam
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 10:02 PM, Elizabeth Tasker <
>> tasker at astro1.sci.hokudai.ac.jp> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> I agree with Brian. I've only recently discovered python notebooks and I
>>> love them for my own analysis and when I'm looking at data together with my
>>> students and we're exploring data sets, but I feel they are unnecessary
>>> cumbersome for code examples.
>>>
>>> Most of the cookbook snippets have only one simple product (image, plot
>>> etc), so you don't gain a great deal by showing the results from each line
>>> in the notebook.
>>>
>>> Additionally, however great notebooks are, they're not as handy for
>>> tasks that you need to perform repeatedly or for writing full length
>>> analysis scripts. In my opinion, using yt as a front end to more detailed
>>> analysis is one of its major strengths. If you take away the cookbook
>>> scripts, we lack examples of yt in python programs.
>>>
>>> The notebooks are also not quite as easy to use as a downloaded code
>>> snippet.
>>>
>>> Elizabeth
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Oct 23, 2013, at 7:23 PM, Brian O'Shea <bwoshea at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Cameron,
>>>
>>> For what it's worth, as a user of yt I find the current cookbook format
>>> to be incredibly useful.  I don't think notebooks would add to the utility
>>> - it's easy enough for me to download the script and load it into a
>>> notebook on my own machine if that's what I want to do.  It definitely
>>> seems that the challenges (and possible downsides) substantially outweigh
>>> the benefits, at least for me and my usage patterns.
>>>
>>> --Brian
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Cameron Hummels <chummels at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hey everyone,
>>>>
>>>> The documentation sprint is next Monday and Tuesday for those of you
>>>> who want to participate.  I'll send out another email regarding that in the
>>>> next day or so.
>>>>
>>>> In preparation for that, though, I wanted to request input from the
>>>> developer community on something related to the docs.
>>>>
>>>> Right now, the cookbook page contains a lot of recipes for doing
>>>> various things, and I think it is hugely beneficial to the community to
>>>> maintain this (I personally use this page a lot too!).  However, with the
>>>> advent of ipython notebooks over the last year, we are faced with a
>>>> question: should we move toward incorporating more notebooks into our
>>>> documentation, and specifically, do you we want to transfer the existing
>>>> cookbook to a series of notebooks for each task?
>>>>
>>>> Benefits:
>>>> --Portability: users can download an entire notebook for both viewing
>>>> how it should work as well as being able to execute it locally on their own
>>>> datasets
>>>> --Illustrative: Interim steps in a cookbook can produce output that can
>>>> show up inside the notebook, instead of being a single script which
>>>> generates an image/output at the end (as is the case in the current
>>>> paradigm)
>>>> --Narrative: notebooks provide more space for narrating each step,
>>>> instead of confining any narrative to comments in the recipe itself
>>>>
>>>> Disadvantages:
>>>> --Work: it is going to take a decent amount of work to move all of the
>>>> recipes over from the existing cookbook to individual notebooks
>>>> --Bulking of repo: In the current paradigm, images associated with each
>>>> recipe are generated dynamically on the server by executing each script,
>>>> thereby minimizing the number of files that need to be tracked by
>>>> mercurial.  By moving to a notebook with images that are embedded in each
>>>> notebook, we'd potentially increase the footprint of the repository
>>>> substantially, especially if there were frequent updates of individual
>>>> recipes.
>>>>
>>>> I also like the yt bootcamp notebooks that Matt put together a year
>>>> ago.  I think they are great for getting new users up to speed on how to
>>>> use various aspects of the code.  Perhaps this notebook could make its way
>>>> into the beginning of the cookbook for a more streamlined approach to the
>>>> documentation?
>>>>
>>>> So now is your chance to vote:
>>>>
>>>> Move cookbook to ipython notebooks? +/- 0-1?
>>>>
>>>> Move yt bootcamp to cookbook? +/- 0-1?
>>>>
>>>> Comments?  Suggestions?
>>>>
>>>> Cameron
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Cameron Hummels
>>>> Postdoctoral Researcher
>>>> Steward Observatory
>>>> University of Arizona
>>>> http://chummels.org
>>>>
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