February 9, 2012 at 23:04 (Fedora)

Did you know that IPython has GUI? I didn’t. Then I’ve found ipython-gui package by accident. Wow, what is this?

This package contains the gui of ipython, which requires PyQt.

Nice, let’s try that out. I installed ipython-gui and… nothing. No new desktop launcher installed. No new executable installed. No new man page. No documentation of any kind. Nothing. Inspecting man ipython yielded same (no) results.

After dozens minutes spent Googling, I finally found the magic command:

$ ipython qtconsole

Hah, you are no match for me, ipython developers, I’ve found it in the end!

So once we know how to run it, what does it do? Well it is an improved IPython console. Main features I noticed in the first few minutes:

· Syntax highlighting.

· Tab completion hints disappear nicely and don’t “reset” your current line.

· Methods docstrings are shown in the form of tooltips immediately after typing the opening parenthesis.

· True multi-line editing support. You can finally invoke a multi-line command from history and easily change a single line. Yes!

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