Increase timeout for live docs

[kini]

Note: it seems that this setting 'idle_timeout' is only used for live
documentation browser pages, so it should be safe to change it without
affecting users' worksheets' behavior.

[ppurka]

This parameter is also used for timing out normal worksheets. So, it is not correct to write it as timeout of the live documentation only.

[kini]

Are you sure? The only place I see it being used is here: https://github.com/sagemath/sagenb/blob/master/sagenb/notebook/notebook.py#L1252

Note the if W.docbrowser().

[ppurka]

It is here: https://github.com/sagemath/sagenb/blob/master/sagenb/notebook/run_notebook.py#L537

[kini]

That is reading it, not setting it.

[ppurka]

Well, you can set it too. I don't remember where. I do use that parameter (i.e. timeout) on banana. Will let you know when I find out :)

[kini]

Certainly, you can set it, but if it is not read anywhere except the line I mentioned -- which appears to be the case -- then it is not used to time out anything except docbrowser worksheets, i.e. the live documentation, no matter what it is set to.

By the way, you can set it by passing it as a parameter to the notebook() call or to sage -n.

[ppurka]

Thinking about it, I think my only objection is to the comment. Saying that
it is used only for live documentation is misleading. Otherwise, there
should be no problem in increasing the timeout.

[kini]

What's misleading about it? Is it used for anything else other than live documentation?

[ppurka]

It is set from the timeout parameter. Also look at the function here
https://github.com/sagemath/sagenb/blob/master/sagenb/notebook/notebook.py#L1251
The idle_timeout parameter does affect both documentation and normal worksheets.

[kini]

Note the if W.docbrowser().

In particular: https://github.com/sagemath/sagenb/blob/master/sagenb/notebook/notebook.py#L1254

[ppurka]

Yes, but that happens only if timeout is zero. Otherwise all open worksheets are quit as long as the timeout is nonzero. The nonzero value is obtained from idle_timeout.

[kini]

D'oh, you're right, sorry :)

[kini]

@ppurka or @nthiery, can you review this?

[nthiery]

I don't know enough the notebook code to really review, but this sounds reasonable.

That being said, I'd increase the default timeout for live worksheets to 10 minutes (then you have most likely switched to some other task, while spending two minutes thinking or scratching some paper is usual).

Thanks for your work on that issue!

[ppurka]

I think this needs a more careful fix, now that you have separated the timeouts.

1. Can you put some comments beside the timeouts explaining what they are for? Is idle only for worksheets? And what is pub for?
2. Depending on which timeout is for worksheets, we should change the line on https://github.com/sagemath/sagenb/blob/master/sagenb/notebook/run_notebook.py#L537 to the user specified timeout.

[ppurka]

Oops. Sorry, that was so silly of me. The dicts contain the descriptions.

[nthiery]

And for the record, I should mention here my original motivation: my
main use of live documentation is to go through sage tutorials, course
notes and the like during talks and classes. See e.g.:

http://combinat.sagemath.org/doc/thematic_tutorials/talks.html

It's very anoying to type in some stuff, pause for two minutes to
explain something, and come back to discover that all the previously
set variables were silently reset.

Which points to an independent thing: there should be some visual
feedback when there is a reset. Should I create a separate issue for
that?

Of course this will be a less crucial feature when it will be possible
to import rst documents.

[kini]

@nthiery, for now, can you just set the timeout yourself in the notebook settings? For example on sagenb.org if we suddenly increase the timeout by a factor of 5, the server load may jump significantly. What we're editing in this pull request is just the default values.

Alternatively, if you or ppurka wants to give this positive review, I can put it into sagenb 0.10.6 and immediately put it on the Sage trac. (I screwed up 0.10.5, which now doesn't even load into Sage, haha.)

Which points to an independent thing: there should be some visual
feedback when there is a reset. Should I create a separate issue for
that?

Please do, but I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the notebook to actually implement that...

[ppurka]

This should be doc_timeout, as well as the line 1253 before it. There is no need for a pub_timeout since published worksheets are noninteractive.

[kini]

Good point... I somehow thought that published worksheets could be interactive. Fixed in 7346a9a.

[ppurka]

What is this POS? Shouldn't it be 2 now?

[kini]

Indeed, haha. I had POS : 2 for pub_timeout before we decided that was useless. In practice it doesn't matter, though - these POS variables are just used for ordering and most of the config entries don't even have a POS set (which means it defaults to 100).

[ppurka]

So, you are fairly certain that setting doc_timeout to 600 won't cause any "harm"? :) In that case, we can change it to 600. Let me pull in @jasongrout to find out what his opinion is w.r.t. this change.

[jasongrout]

Sure, I guess. I thought we increased the timeout a long time ago to avoid the infamous text cell corruption bug. I think the default timeouts should be much longer than 2 minutes, but I haven't looked at the code in a while, so I'm not absolutely certain of the ramifications.

[ppurka]

Thanks. I have changed it to 600 in the other pull request: kini#1

[ppurka]

Ok. I have no more problems with this patch. I believe it is good to go.

[kini]

Cool, thanks :)