Notebook API evolution

[jrieken]

This issue is a high level summary of all notebook API discussions. It should provide an overview of how stable or unstable certain areas of the API are and where to expect major or minor changes.

Issues labeled with notebook and api are on our radar https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues?q=is%3Aopen+label%3Anotebook+label%3Aapi. The following is a subset of those issues grouped by the area into which they fall

Notebook execution

• How do we model execution of a single cell, some cells (like Run cells below), and the whole notebook: Allow extensions to call cell commands with cell arguments #98282 (comment)
• Stopping cell execution - interrupting a kernel vs cancellation of executions: Interrupting a kernel vs Cancelling cell execution #106741
• We have no explicit execution model. Today, we use a combination of metadata properties for this, e.g. NotebookCellMetadata#runState: Notebook cell execution model #105847

Notebook output

• Some red flags on API guidelines Clean-up cell output debt #105846
• No way to differentiate between static output and dynamic output. Likely not needed
• Very closely modelled after jupyter kernels, e.g why is CellErrorOutput not a special mime-type?, Simplify notebook cell output API #107424

[Notebook|Cell]-Metadata

• Loose differentiation between code cells and markdown cells, e.g what does NotebookCellMetadata#outputCollapsed mean for markdown? Code cell vs markdown cell #105933
• We should try to separate view state (folding, collapsing, etc) from metadata
• Naming issues: Notebook metadata - undefined means false #106746
• Unclear separation of concerns. What does NotebookCellMetadata#runnable mean in a world of different kernels, Run info in notebook metadata #106747
• available languages currently are defined by content providers by reading metadata#language_info in the file. However this info is updated by connected kernel. Explore API implications for allowing multiple notebook extensions to share the same file format #106694 (comment)

NotebookEditor

• cell status bar API needs to revisited, Notebook cell status bar API #105809
• tweaks wrt API guidelines, NotebookEditor debt/api issues #106336

[jrieken]

Closing - this is just a snapshot and has gone stale