Scratchpad

[Phyks]

Hi,

Very often, when editing (and debugging) my notebook, I change temporarily the value of a variable. It is not always a good solution to change it in a cell, as I often forget about the temporary change, and could forget to revert it back. My current solution is to have a "scratchpad section" at the end of the notebook, with cells that I only execute to tweak the value of a variable without altering it in its cell, which I expect to remain correct.

What about offering the ability to type some instruction live, in a scratchpad cell (that could be triggered by a shortcut and discarded after execution)?

[eronlloyd]

Do you wish to have a temporal code cell that is deleted, or are you instead looking for a better way to use inputs to control the code execution? Also, would it be better to instead be able to hide the scratch pad when not in use, but retain its contents as code parameters?

[Phyks]

These are two different behaviours which can be discussed. Personnally, I would tend to think the best idea would be to have a "scratchpad" panel, with cells whose code would be retained. A bit like a notebook in a notebook. However, this could be much more difficult and complex to implement and maintain than just a splash input à la "Alt+F2" (usual shortcut to call a launcher for apps in WM for instance).

[Carreau]

Interesting idea, I also though about ti a few time. I would expect getting the behavior right and the UI obvious to be harder than expected. That will likeley be more doable once the current Phosphor refactor is done.

[Phyks]

I have just found https://github.com/minrk/nbextension-scratchpad which is pretty new, but seems to do just what I wanted. Will give it a try.