Keyword completion in options

[jlstevens]

Given that we want to reduce the use of the %%opts magic, it would be good if the .options method could tab-complete the available keywords.

This is possible to do in IPython but it will involve some hackish dynamic updates of docstrings. I'm wondering if this could be done by a safe utility in the constructor, ideally in one place at the Dimensioned level...

[jlstevens]

I'll assign this to 1.10 as it would be nice to have a replacement for %%opts that can be recommended even for notebooks.

[philippjfr]

An alternative to docstring hackery to make this work would be to replace .options with a property which returns an object which would provides a __call__ method which provides the tab-completion. We could for instance dynamically create a ParameterizedFunction which defines the valid options as parameters.

[jlstevens]

Maybe I am misremembering but that approach is essentially piggy-backing off param to set the docstrings for you.

[philippjfr]

Right, I think that's preferable over re-implementing custom docstring hackery for this particular case, but I'll leave that up to whoever implements this.

[jlstevens]

I'm fine with this (and happy to implement it) though if I remember right, you were objecting to callable objects that look like methods at one point. :-)

[philippjfr]

I'm fine with this (and happy to implement it) though if I remember right, you were objecting to callable objects that look like methods at one point. :-)

No I was objecting to using nested APIs like redim everywhere, obj.options() will appear to work just like any other method, something like obj.options.style() is what I would object to.

[jlstevens]

Sure though simply by being parameterized means nested things like obj.options.params() will now exist even if not really part of the holoviews API.

[philippjfr]

Sure though simply by being parameterized means nested things like obj.options.params() will now exist even if not really part of the holoviews API.

True, not ideal I guess, maybe a custom solution is preferable.

[philippjfr]

Implemented in #3173