Use httpgd NPM package

[nx10]

What problem did you solve?

This is a first WIP attempt at replacing the client side API and connection code with the new httpgd NPM package to unify and simplify development.

This is also discussed in nx10/httpgd#79

This PR is a very early prototype, basic functionality is implemented, but there are still a lot of bugs. This is intended as a starting point for further development with @ManuelHentschel

Changes:

• Replaced type definitions with imported types
• Replaced API and connection handling code
• Removed client side zooming (this is now properly handled server side)
• Removed unique ID hack (portable SVG renderer is now used)

Bugs:

• There seems to be a problem when more than one plot is drawn (duplicated invisible plots in history)
• Plot view very small when opened
• Text border is colored instead of the text itself when using theming

[ManuelHentschel]

Thanks for the PR! I started working on the "Export plot as..." functionality but got stuck at the point where I actually need to get the content of the exported plot (here).

I've seen that you do this kind of "manually" here. Should I also do something like that, or is this supposed to be part of the httpgd-js api?

[ManuelHentschel]

The latest push depends on the httpgd version from nx10/httpgd-js#1. To test this, I temporarily removed the httpgd dependency and use yarn link to import a local version of the package.

[ManuelHentschel]

* There seems to be a problem when more than one plot is drawn (duplicated invisible plots in history)

The last commit hopefully fixes this. I think the bug became visible, because we removed the refresh timeout (the underlying bug was masked by this timeout). To avoid too frequent rerendering of the html while a new plot is drawn, I'd still recommend adding the timeout functionality again.

* Plot view very small when opened

In the .ejs files the property plot.svg needed to be renamed to plot.data, now it should look normal again.

* Text border is colored instead of the text itself when using theming

Can you please give an example for this?

[nx10]

I just pushed a commit that streams the plot directly into the exported file. This should be more memory efficient and might be a bit faster. There seems to be a problem with eslint not recognizing the Response object correctly (eslint thinks this is the browser Response object and not the node-fetch one. This might be a cross-fetch problem or config problem in vscode-r I am not sure.

* Text border is colored instead of the text itself when using theming

Can you please give an example for this?

Nevermind, I think I was testing with an old version of vscode-R when I noticed this. Text looks good now.

Good job on the other two fixes as well.

Edit:

To avoid too frequent rerendering of the html while a new plot is drawn, I'd still recommend adding the timeout functionality again.

I agree.

[ManuelHentschel]

Anything else that needs to be implemented/fixed, @nx10 @renkun-ken ?

[nx10]

I think the restructuring went very well, thank you for your work.

At some point if somebody volunteered to add an article for the httpgd documentation would be great: https://nx10.github.io/httpgd/articles/b01_vscode.html

[renkun-ken]

Thanks for the nice work!

As I test the httpgd plot viewer commands, it looks like "Toggle Preview Plot Layout" will randomly make the previews disappear rather than rearrange the layout. Not sure if you could reproduce it?

[ManuelHentschel]

As I test the httpgd plot viewer commands, it looks like "Toggle Preview Plot Layout" will randomly make the previews disappear rather than rearrange the layout. Not sure if you could reproduce it?

That command cycles through three different layouts: horizontal scrolling, multi-row and hidden (i.e. the previews disappear)

[renkun-ken]

That command cycles through three different layouts: horizontal scrolling, multi-row and hidden (i.e. the previews disappear)

OK. The hidden one seems not quite useful for me, as it is almost the same with full window mode.

[ManuelHentschel]

OK. The hidden one seems not quite useful for me, as it is almost the same with full window mode.

I think this option was requested at some point, and it might be useful e.g. if your webview pane is rather tall and narrow, but you still don't want to see all your previous plots.

[renkun-ken]

LGTM