jupyterlab-gridwidth

JupyterLab extension to

• tag cells so that they use a fraction of the width
• can replace former 'split-cell' extension in the classic notebook

It was preferred not to re-use the term 'split', because in jupyterlab split already means, well, to split a cell into 2 cells...

Warning: jlab 4.2 and windowingMode

Starting with jlab 4.2, the windowingMode setting in the notebook extension defaults to full
This setting enables an optimized display algorithm, that currently is incompatible with the gridwidth extension
So as a short-term workaround, for using this extension, you can set this back to defer in the Settings Editor, as illustrated below

:class: warning

Starting with 0.4.0, the extension will **silently change this setting for you**  
Next releases will likely include a more user-friendly way to handle this

see also this issue for more details

:align: center
:width: 600px

## Requirements

- JupyterLab >= 4.0.0

## Usage

### as a replacement for for former `split-cell`

You can use

- either press the `<->` button on the notebook toolbar and use the drop down list to perform cell width adjustment (shown in the demo gif above)
- or keyboard `Alt+1, Alt+2` (meaning you want to use 1 / 2 of the horizontal space)
- or type `gridwidth` in the Palette and pick 1/2
- or command `gridwidth:toggle-1-2`
- that you can bind to a keyboard shortcut of your choice
- you can also apply width change to multiple cells which are selected (use `shift + click` or `shift + up/down` to select)

### to convert your notebooks

```bash
splitcell-to-gridwidth notebook1 .. notebookN

will replace the old cell_style: split with the new gridwidth-1-2 tag in all notebooks passed as arguments

palette commands

• gridwidth:toggle-1-2 and so on
• gridwidth:cancel to reset to full width

keyboard shortcuts

• Alt+1, Alt+2 and so on; these will toggle the corresponding tag, and remove any other tag that might be present
• Alt+0 to reset to full width

available tags:

• gridwidth-1-2 (50%)
• gridwidth-1-3 (~33%) gridwidth-2-3 (~66%)
• gridwidth-1-4 gridwidth-2-4, gridwidth-3-4
• gridwidth-1-5 gridwidth-2-5, gridwidth-3-5, gridwidth-4-5
• gridwidth-1-6 gridwidth-2-6, gridwidth-3-6, gridwidth-4-6, gridwidth-5-6

other controls

since this exclusively relies on the presence of the above tags, you can also use jupyterlab's so called "Property Inspector" feature; of course in this case you're in charge of dealing with duplicate tags...

limitations

rendering is exclusively done in CSS; converting to a non-HTML format will ruin this layout

however we will try to provide a CSS file usable with jupyter-book to preserve the layout in jb's HTML output (not yet available)

Install

To install the extension, execute:

pip install jupyterlab-gridwidth

Uninstall

To remove the extension, execute:

pip uninstall jupyterlab-gridwidth

Development install

WARNING from this point on, this is the boilerplate text that comes with the extension cookie-cutter template; it is not guaranteed to be accurate

Note: You will need NodeJS to build the extension package.

The jlpm command is JupyterLab's pinned version of yarn that is installed with JupyterLab. You may use yarn or npm in lieu of jlpm below.

# Clone the repo to your local environment
# Change directory to the jupyterlab-gridwidth directory
# Install package in development mode
pip install -e "."
# Link your development version of the extension with JupyterLab
jupyter labextension develop . --overwrite
# Rebuild extension Typescript source after making changes
jlpm build

You can watch the source directory and run JupyterLab at the same time in different terminals to watch for changes in the extension's source and automatically rebuild the extension.

# Watch the source directory in one terminal, automatically rebuilding when needed
jlpm watch
# Run JupyterLab in another terminal
jupyter lab

With the watch command running, every saved change will immediately be built locally and available in your running JupyterLab. Refresh JupyterLab to load the change in your browser (you may need to wait several seconds for the extension to be rebuilt).

By default, the jlpm build command generates the source maps for this extension to make it easier to debug using the browser dev tools. To also generate source maps for the JupyterLab core extensions, you can run the following command:

jupyter lab build --minimize=False

Development uninstall

pip uninstall jupyterlab-gridwidth

In development mode, you will also need to remove the symlink created by jupyter labextension develop command. To find its location, you can run jupyter labextension list to figure out where the labextensions folder is located. Then you can remove the symlink named jupyterlab-gridwidth within that folder.

Packaging the extension

See RELEASE