Creating a ptpython pane inside another prompt_toolkit UI

[AnthonyDiGirolamo]

Hi @jonathanslenders I'm hoping you can give me some advice here. We are trying to build a prompt_toolkit app for interacting with devices over pyserial. We'd like it to be a full screen app and have at least two panes: one for displaying log messages from pyserial connected devices and one for an interactive python repl.

Here's the layout:

self.python_pane = PythonPane()
self.root_container = FloatContainer(
    content=HSplit(
        [
            self.top_toolbar,
            self.log_pane,
            self.split_window,
            self.python_pane.window,
            self.bottom_toolbar,
        ],
    ),
    floats=[
        # Message Echo Area
        Float(bottom=1, left=0, right=0, height=1,
                content=MessageToolbarBar(self)),
        # Floating Help Window
        Float(
            content=HelpWindow(self),
            right=2, top=2,
        ),
    ],
)

To kick off the pt app I have:

async def run(self):
    """Start the prompt_toolkit UI."""
    background_log_task = asyncio.create_task(self.log_forever())
    try:
        unused_result = await self.application.run_async(
            set_exception_handler=True)
    finally:
        background_log_task.cancel()
    print("Quitting event loop. Bye.")

The PythonPane() class is a bunch of stuff copy pasted (for experimentation) from ptpython/repl.py and ptpython/python_input.py but without the bits to create a new a new prompt_toolkit application (from here). I also moved a bunch of logic from run() and eval() here in repl.py and moved it into the _accept_handler here

The goal being to allow embeding into an existing app. Some questions:

1. Is this a good way to do this? If yes would you accept a pull request to support this use case? I think it would have to refactor the parts that create a new app and layout outside of the PythonInput class and provide an example of how to override the accept_handler.
2. Am I better off writing my own repl like https://github.com/prompt-toolkit/python-prompt-toolkit/blob/master/examples/full-screen/calculator.py
3. Can ipython support rendering other prompt_toolkit containers in it's UI that are updated asynchronously?

Thanks for any feedback you can provide!

[AnthonyDiGirolamo]

Ok so I have this somewhat working with this change: AnthonyDiGirolamo@1e95086

It allows to us to create our own PwPtPythonRepl(repl.PythonRepl) class. Like this: https://pigweed-review.googlesource.com/c/pigweed/pigweed/+/41580/9/pw_console/py/pw_console/pw_ptpython_repl.py Which can be part of our prompt_toolkit app.

Currently it just logs the results instead of printing them. I still need to figure out how to make this bit not print to stdout and just return the formatted text instead.