Olive.jl

Pure julia notebooks
Author ChifiSource
Popularity
152 Stars
Updated Last
5 Months Ago
Started In
April 2022
๐Ÿฉท| 0.0.93 | (pre-release III)|๐Ÿฉท

Welcome to olive! Olive is a pure julia notebook editor built on the back of multiple dispatch. Through multiple dispatch, olive is able to change functionality entirely by simply having new methods. Using extensions, olive can edit any file. Among other things, olive features ...

  • regular julia modules
  • unparalleled extensibility
  • modular design
  • tabbing notebooks
  • its own julia ecosystem
  • customizable settings
  • reading of pluto, julia, olive, and ipython notebooks
  • exporting to multiple formats
  • a full file-browser
  • julia repl cells
  • module and include cells for software development
  • deployability
  • shared variables between multiple cell-types
  • a two-pane design
  • loadable directories as profiles
  • flexible and modern design
  • the ability to edit any file
map

get started

  • this overview corresponds to Olive 0.0.92, subsequent versions may vary slightly.
  • Keep in mind this version of Olive (while functional) is still a work in progress build. Thank you for reporting bugs to the issues page!
getting olive

Getting started with Olive starts by installing this package via Pkg. Press ] to enter your pkg REPL, or use the Pkg.add Function to add Olive.

julia> using Pkg; Pkg.add("Olive")
julia> ]

pkg> add Olive

Alternatively, you could also grab Unstable, this will give you the latest developments (0.0.9), but some features might be intermittently broken.

julia> ]
pkg> add Olive#Unstable
using Olive; Olive.start()

To change the IP or PORT, use the positional arguments IP (1, String) and PORT (2, Int64). There are also the key-word arguments

  • path::String = homedirec() -- Provides a path from which to setup or start Olive.
  • warm::Bool = true -- determines whether or not Olive should precompile olive and "warm" the Toolips server. This helps reduce initial latency when starting Olive.

If there is no olive setup inside of path, start will ask us for a root name to create a new olive home at that path. Providing path allows us to setup multiple Olive environments across our filesystem.

IP = "127.0.0.1" # same as default (see ?(Olive.start))
PORT = 8000
startpath = "/home/dev/notebooks"
using Olive

Olive.start(IP, PORT, path = startpath)

The Olive.start method also returns a Toolips.WebServer, this being the server that contains your entire Olive session. This provides an easy avenue to introspect and work with Olive, especially if you know what you are doing. There is more information on working with this server type in the deploying olive portion of this README.

explanation

Olive uses parameters and multiple dispatch to load new features with the creation of method definitions. This technique is used comprehensively for Olive's Directory and Project types, as well as IPyCell's Cell. This allows for a Symbol to be provided as a parameter. With this, Olive either reads the methods for its own functions or provides them as arguments to alter the nature of UI components. Project, Directory, and Cell are all julia types. These are translated into the Olive web-based UI using build methods. For example, the creator cell will list out all of the methods that Olive has defined for build(::Toolips.AbstractConnection, ::Toolips.Modifier, ::Cell{<:Any}, ::Vector{Cell}, proj::Project{<:Any}). In order to name such a cell, simply label the parameter in the Cell using a Symbol.

This is the defining characteristic of Olive, and also how the base Olive features are built. This is why Olive is a multiple dispatch notebook, not just that but a parametric multiple dispatch notebook. As a result, a lot of what Projects, Cells, and Directories do is pretty open-ended -- anything is possible. This is also how extensions for Olive work. While this might not be that important to know if you are not extending Olive on your own, it is helpful to know this going into Olive and the rest of this README.

user interface

Olive's user-interface is relatively straightforward. When starting olive, you will be greeted with a get started Project. A Project in Olive is represented by a tab and the project's cells. This consumes the majority of the UI. These projects are contained within two separate panes, the left pane and the right pane respectively. The left pane can be open without the right pane, but the right pane cannot be open without the left pane. The project can be switched using the pane switcher button on the top of the project. At the top of the window will be the topbar. The topbar has two buttons on it, on the left this is a folder with an arrow. Clicking this button will open the project explorer. This is the menu to the left of your Olive session. The project explorer contains a (green) working directory, as well as any other saved user directories. Additionally, the project explorer holds a home directory if the current user is root.

The main window is called session. This contains two panes which will be filled with your projects. Projects are denoted by a tab and a window which contains cells. This tab can be double clicked for a range of different project options.

session

Session is the colloquial name for the main editor which comprises Olive -- this being the Project and Cell combination. Inside of session there are two panes, pane_one and pane_two respectively. These panes houses projects, their tabs being contained within a tab container above them. Clicking these tabs will yield project focus. Double clicking will add the tab's controls to the tab. These are, from left to right, decollapse controls, new cell, switch pane, re-source,step evaluate, and close project. Other than this, the hotkeys in keybindings are the primary method Olive uses for input. Files are open from the project explorer and then edited inside of this session, before being saved.

keybindings

Using cells is simple. By default, olive bindings use ctrl alone for window features, ctrl + shift to do things inside of Cell, and shift to work with the Project. Here is the keymap reflecting this:

  • window bindings

    • ctrl + C copy
    • ctrl + X cut
    • ctrl + V paste
    • ctrl + S save selected project
    • ctrl + z undo
    • ctrl + y redo
    • ctrl + F search TODO (but has default)
    • ctrl + O open TODO
    • ctrl + N new TODO
  • project bindings

    • ctrl + shift + C copy selected cell TODO
    • ctrl + shift + X cut selected cell TODO
    • ctrl + shift + V paste selected cell TODO
    • ctrl + Shift + S save project as
    • ctrl + shift + Delete delete selected cell
    • ctrl + shift + Enter new cell
    • ctrl + shift + โ†‘ move selected cell up
    • ctrl + shift + โ†“ move selected cell down
    • ctrl + shift + O open TODO
  • cell bindings

    • shift + Enter run cell
    • shift + โ†‘ shift focus up
    • shift + โ†‘ shift focus down

These keybindings can be edited inside of the settings

settings

The final component of the Olive UI we might want to familiarize ourselves with is the settings menu. Using load extensions, everything in Olive becomes a customizable setting. This menu is pretty straightforward, press the cog in the top bar to open or close the settings. Settings are organized into different menus by extension. These menus can be collapsed and decollapsed and contain editable settings for Olive. Note that in some cases, the page may need to be refreshed for new settings to be applied. There are more nuanced examples to this, as well. For example, changing your highlighter's style will yield no changes until a cell is typed into (or another cell is built.) Changing the key-bindings will only apply to newly built cells.

project explorer

The project explorer is a crucial component to your Olive session because it manages the entire underlying filesystem running in your Environment. Directories, like cells and projects, are parametric types -- so Olive has different directory types. Base Olive comes with the following directory types:

  • home (pink) is the home directory used to change Olive, which is added only for root.
  • pwd (green) is the current Environment working directory.
  • {<:Any} (black) is the catchall directory, in practice this usually represents an unsaved directory in Olive.
  • saved (purple) is a saved directory.

New directories and files are created through the pwd directory, where all file operations take place. This directory is essentially our file browser. The bookmark indicator on directories in this menu will add a directory to your saved directories, which may then be permanently saved using the save button.

Clicking the + icon next to the pwd directory will create a new project, file, or directory from a selected template. Clicking the + next to the home directory will add a new Olive extension by name or by URL.

extensions

Olive is not Olive without extensions. While the base Olive features are pretty cool, Olive's base is intentionally built with a minimalist mindset. The idea is that nothing is everyone's cup of tea, so why use someone else's computer to load things for people who do not even want those things to begin with? With the Olive (and frankly, Julia) approach new features are added by adding new methods to existing Olive functions. With this, Olive becomes a notebook centralized on multiple dispatch! Olive extensions work off of Olive's parametric multiple dispatch methodology for loading extensions. A parameter is used to denote the existence of a new function, and each method of a given function becomes representative of that cell's action.

installing extensions

Extensions can be added to Olive by first clicking the + button by your home directory in Olive, then typing the extension's URL into the name box before pressing add

creating extensions

This section of the readme, unfortunately still needs some work.

documentation

With the upcoming release of 0.1.0, chifi will also be releasing OliveCreator, this will be a website which hosts Olive. Along with this there will be interactive examples, notebooks, and most importantly -- documentation (for all chifi stuff, really awesome olive-based documentation). The problem is that this still requires a lot of work to Olive and its sister projects. In its current state the two best tools to learn Olive are

  • this README

  • or the OliveDefaults documentation browser.

    I would recommend the latter. For the most part, this documentation is only needed if you are writing extensions for Olive. I could see knowledge of how the thing works being beneficial in these early pre-releases, however. In other instances, this README should suffice.

deploying olive

status

In its current form, Olive would certainly need some things to be deployable. The main concern on this front is that the modules still have Base inside of them (they can cd the julia working directory around, for example). Currently, we are working through the extensions to facilitate this functionality, and this section will be updated once this is done.

creating a server

Unless you are only sharing your olive with a limited number of people, you probably do not want this server to load from your home olive. That being said, it is really easy to create an olive at any path on your machine using the path key-word argument on start.

using Olive; Olive.start(path = ".")

This will give us an olive home directory inside of the provided URI. Inside of this directory, we can begin developing our module. From there, it is simply extending your Olive and manipulating it into being server-ready. Alternatively, start does not have to be used and you can load Olive by manually creating the olive server yourself. This is not entirely recommended, especially not for new users, primarily because there is no documentation on doing this. However, there is more information and a small write-up on this in olive servers

olive servers

The Olive.start function actually does not return Nothing, it returns a Toolips.WebServer.

help?> Toolips.WebServer
  WebServer <: ToolipsServer
  โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“โ€“

    โ€ข  host::String

    โ€ข  routes::Dict

    โ€ข  extensions::Dict

    โ€ข  server::Any

    โ€ข  add::Function

    โ€ข  remove::Function

    โ€ข  start::Function

  A web-server is given as a return from a ServerTemplate whenever ServerTemplate.start() is ran. It can be rerouted with route! and indexed similarly to
  the Connection, with Symbols representing extensions and Strings representing routes.

  example
  โ‹…โ‹…โ‹…โ‹…โ‹…โ‹…โ‹…โ‹…โ‹…

  st = ServerTemplate()
  ws = st.start()
  routes(ws)
  ...
  extensions(ws)
  ...
  route!(ws, "/") do c::Connection
      write!(c, "hello")
  end

This is an introspectable server type that holds all of the data for your Olive session. From your Julia REPL, this can easily be introspected by accessing the extensions and routes.

oliveserver = Olive.start()

oliveserver[:OliveCore]

This also means that the routes of an Olive server could be changed, or rerouted in anyway -- really. All of the projects are stored within the OliveCore.open field, a Vector{Olive.Environment}. Our client data is stored inside of OliveCore.client_data and open projects are in OliveCore.open.

contributing

Olive is a complicated project, and there is a lot going on from merely Olive itself to the entire ecosystem that supports olive. That being said, community support is essential to improving this project. You may contribute to Olive by

  • simply using olive ๐Ÿซ’
  • creating extensions for olive ๐Ÿš€
  • sharing olive with your friends! ๐Ÿฉท
  • starring olive โญ
  • forking olive contributing guidelines
  • submitting issues issue guidelines
  • participating in the community ๐Ÿ”ด๐ŸŸข๐ŸŸฃ

I thank you for all of your help with our project, or just for considering contributing! I want to stress further that we are not picky -- allowing us all to express ourselves in different ways is part of the key methodology behind the entire chifi ecosystem. Feel free to contribute, we would love to see your art! Issues marked with good first issue might be a great place to start!

guidelines

When submitting issues or pull-requests for Olive, it is important to make sure of a few things. We are not super strict, but making sure of these few things will be helpful for maintainers!

  1. You have replicated the issue on Olive#Unstable
  2. The issue does not currently exist... or does not have a planned implementation different to your own. In these cases, please collaborate on the issue, express your idea and we will select the best choice.
  3. Pull Request TO UNSTABLE
  4. This is an issue with Olive, not a dependency; if there is a problem with highlighting, please report that issue to ToolipsMarkdown. If there is an issue with Cell reading/writing, report that issue to IPyCells
  5. Be specific about your issue -- if you are experiencing multiple issues, open multiple issues. It is better to have a high quantity of issues that specifically describe things than a low quantity of issues that describe multiple things.
  6. If you have a new issue, open a new issue. It is not best to comment your issue under an unrelated issue; even a case where you are experiencing that issue, if you want to mention another issue, open a new issue.
  7. Questions are fine, but not questions answered inside of this README.

tech stack

I appreciate those who are interested to take some time to look into the tech-stack used to create this project. I created a lot of these, and it took a lot of time.

toolips packages

other packages

  • IPyCells Provides the parametric cell structures for the back-end, as well as the Julia/IPython readers/writers
  • Pkg Used to manage Julia dependencies and virtual environments.
  • TOML Used to manage environment information, save settings, and read TOML into cells.