Intelligent auto naming, or ask for name on first user.save

[miraculixx]

Currently ipython notebook saves new notebooks as "untitled #.ipynb" where # is a sequence number. That's nice because it safes you the hassle of thinking of saving in the first place. It is however not so nice because in a short amount of time you end up with a list of "untitled #.ipynb" files and it becomes hard to find a specific notebook, short of opening (and shutting down) each one. Of course, not renaming the notebook before closing it down is simply a sign of one being too lazy or forgetful, then again, it would be nice if ipython took the hassle out of this, too.

I suggest to improve naming with either of the following:

• intelligent auto naming: take the first comment line of a code cell, the first literal name, or the first line of text in any other cell
• on user's first explicit save (Ctrl-S), ask for a name
• on closing the notebook, ask for a name

As one way to implement this, e.g. ipython_notebook_config.AUTOSAVE_NAMING could take a lambda that would receive the first cell's type and context and returns a name, so users can simply override it. The default implementation would do as shown below.

Consider these examples

# fun with fibonacci
def fib(n):
    ....

=> would be saved to 'fun with fibonacci.ipynb'

def numbers(N):
    for n in N:
        yield N

=> would be saved to numbers.ipynb

[markdown cell]
* great stuff
* and it has intelligent autonaming, too 

=> would be saved to great stuff.ipynb

[takluyver]

This is a bit tricky, because the name is actually picked when you create a notebook, and used in the URL, so I'm not sure that we should be changing that automatically on save.

If we did do something like this, I think it would be reasonable to look for a title in the first markdown cell. Doing it from function names, comments etc. feels a bit too clever (and hard to do in a cross-language way).

[miraculixx]

This is a bit tricky, because the name is actually picked when you create a notebook, and used in the URL

I see, however the user can choose to rename at any time, so we could just simulate a rename. And since he didn't pick the generated name in first place he will not mind if ipython does that automatically once it knows better (i.e. some content has been entered).

I think it would be reasonable to look for a title in the first markdown cell

I guess that would be a fair start. I'm not sure how this applies to most users, however most of my notebooks are for dev work and don't have a markdown cell. they generally all have a comment line at the top though...

anyhow, I considered it would be difficult to get this right in general/multiple languages, hence the idea for the lambda/callable in ipython_notebook_config.AUTOSAVE_NAMING, so it would be easy to adjust for one's own style. Or whatever better approach you see fit to achieve the same...