Jupyter VPython 0.3.0 available

[Bruce Sherwood]

Now available: Jupyter VPython 0.3.0, the first non-beta version.

We're calling it non-beta because it can run all the glowscript.org example programs except for those that use jquery widgets (button, slider, menu). The only existing GlowScript elements not yet implemented are attach_arrow, attach_trail (but make_trail works), and extrusion.

Ruth Chabay and Bruce Sherwood

[Bruce Sherwood]

Version 0.3.1 released to fix a bug in setting width and height of a canvas: pip install vpython --upgrade

The zip file of demo programs available at vpython.org (https://github.com/BruceSherwood/vpython-jupyter/blob/master/JupyterPythonDemos.zip?raw=true) now contains a Jupyter version of the glowscript.org example program ButtonsSlidersMenus, using Jupyter widgets. A goal is to be able to use the same widget statements in both GlowScript and Jupyter versions of VPython, and perhaps the rather easy to use Jupyter widget syntax is a candidate for emulation in the GlowScript environment.

[Bruce Sherwood]

Version 0.3.2 released to fix a bug in scene.pause() and in the timely updating of scene.range.

The zip file of demo programs available at vpython.org (https://github.com/BruceSherwood/vpython-jupyter/blob/master/JupyterPythonDemos.zip?raw=true) now contains Jupyter versions of nearly all the standard Example programs found at glowscript.org. The interesting challenge is to emulate in the GlowScript environment the widget syntax of Jupyter, which has much to recommend it.

However, probably the highest priority now is to improve Jupyter perfornance, now that almost all the GlowScript syntax is working. John Coady has already done some experiments in using Cython to speed up Python, and experiments on compressing the data stream sent from your Python program to the GlowScript 3D rendering module. It's clear from his work that it should be possible to speed things up considerably.

[Bruce Sherwood]

Jupyter VPython 0.3.3 fixes some bugs in the handling of scene.range and make_trail in the presence of interval > 0. Also, the documentation on make_trail for both Jupyter and GlowScript VPython has been significantly improved:

http://www.glowscript.org/docs/VPythonDocs/trail.html

[Bruce Sherwood]

Oops. Found an error, so there's version 0.3.4: pip install vpython --upgrade