Use websockets for web repl

[jacobhinkle]

The current web repl code appears to do a polling strategy that has to initalize multiple http connections during a single julia session. Using websockets (http://www.websocket.org), the javascript code could be simplified and the latency would be way reduced.

[ViralBShah]

Here's another take at the web REPL, which doesn't seem to be active -

https://github.com/Wisdom/juliaSocial

We probably need a redesign of the web REPL.

[StefanKarpinski]

I'm not particularly into the Etherpad-lite interface, just because I don't care for the look of it, but the interactiveness is lovely.

[arlolra]

I took a crack at a redesign of the web repl this morning. It isn't great but I'd be happy to improve it given some direction.

Take a look:
https://github.com/arlolra/julia-webrepl

[ViralBShah]

That's great. @boyers Can you take a look and comment on the design?

I guess that to match the current one, you need to have multi-line input, pretty printing, integration with d3 for graphics, and maybe a few other things. How difficult would it be to bring it up to speed with what we already have?

What would be really cool is a social web REPL, where you login with your facebook/gmail login ID, and all the state of your session is restored. Then, you can invite others to join the session (perhaps from your facebook friends, or just anyone else really), and have a shared session - kind of like chat, where multiple people are using the same REPL. Someone at MIT attempted such a thing (link above), and it was quite a hit when it was demoed in the class. You may even be able to reuse some of the code.

Also, do look for the webrepl tag in issues - there are a few open issues, and would be nice if this design can avoid/fix those.

[Keno]

While I do think that the web REPL needs a redesign, I think we need to carfeully consider the design goals and/or infrastructure that we need. (@ViralBShah has a small list in #296). Particularly, I think it might be interesting to have some sort of integration with the Cloud9 IDE (c9.io), for which @arlolra 's Node.JS approach would be very helpful. Maybe having a page for brainstorming on the wiki, or a public google docs page would be a good idea, so we can collect ideas, thoughts, and techniques we want to implement.

[ViralBShah]

I second Keno's idea to get a Wiki page going that can evolve into a spec, since this is fairly large functionality.

-viral

On 03-Apr-2012, at 6:20 PM, Keno Fischer wrote:

While I do think that the web REPL needs a redesign, I think we need to carfeully consider the design goals and/or infrastructure that we need. (@ViralBShah has a small list in #296). Particularly, I think it might be interesting to have some sort of integration with the Cloud9 IDE (c9.io), for which @arlolra 's Node.JS approach would be very helpful. Maybe having a page for brainstorming on the wiki, or a public google docs page would be a good idea, so we can collect ideas, thoughts, and techniques we want to implement.

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[arlolra]

@ViralBShah It wouldn't be difficult to bring what I did up to speed w/ the current implementation. I just wanted some feedback before investing any time in it.

I started a page in the wiki: https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/wiki/WebREPL-Spec

[ViralBShah]

Cc: @amitmurthy

[ViralBShah]

https://github.com/amitmurthy/JuliaREPL_Proto uses WebSockets and I was surprised to see how easy it is.