vIPer is now using IPython.nbconvert

As you know (if not, probably the following lines gives you an idea), vIPer was originally designed to export from ipynb files to:

• a plain static html
• a slideshow powered by Landslide

With the last release, IPython support this kind of exportation using the well designed and easily extensible IPython.nbconvert library. Now, it is easier to incorporate the IPython machinery inside vIPer and support the exportation to several formats.

Note: if you want to know more about vIPer, just see the following talk I gave about it at SciPy 2013.

Up to now, I have replaced the old converters by the new ones: the HTMLExporter and the SlidesExporter from IPython.nbconvert. As a consequence, vIPer now supports the generation of IPython slides (deprecating the use of Landslide to get the html-powered slideshow... thank you very much to the Landslide developers for their work... and to make my life easier at the first days of vIPer).

Remarkably, trying to serve the IPython slides inside vIPer was very educational, because IPython.nbconvert already supports the serve of the resulting slides, so I tried to use this functionality and, because I needed to work in parallel, this led me to work a little bit with QtCore.QThreads.

So, I essentially sub-classed the QtCore.QThread:

class ServeThread(QtCore.QThread):
    def __init__(self, extension, container):
        QtCore.QThread.__init__(self)
        self.container = container
        self.extension = extension

    def run(self):
        localO = self.container.titleHistory[-1] + self.extension
        self.container.server.open_in_browser = False
        self.container.server(str(self.container.path) + '/' + localO)

Note: yes, I have to deal with the path in a better way, but I am too lazy to do it now ;-)

And then, I have instantiated the ServerThread class accordingly to my needs:

class Converter:
    def __init__(self, exporter, extension, container):
        self.container = container
        self.extension = extension
        self.exporter = exporter

        self.container.nbConverter(self.exporter, self.extension)
        self.container.servePool.append(ServeThread(self.extension,
                                                    self.container))
        if len(self.container.servePool) == 1:
            self.container.servePool[0].start()
        else:
            pass

It is important to highlight that I needed to call the start() method to run the run() method from the ServeThread class.

And now, vIPer support serving the IPython slides automatically after the conversion step with just a click of a button.

OK, just try vIPer (Github repo) and let me know any bug... and I hope you find the Qt-derived threads information useful, or at least, interesting! ;-)

Damián