[Bf-committers] [GSOC17][Proposal] Jupyter Kernel addon for Blender

[andij.cr at gmail.com]

For this gsoc i'm going to submit a proposal about adding a jupyter kernel
to connect blender.
Right now my only non trivial example of jupyter kernel comes from cling,
the interactive c++11/14/17 shell https://root.cern.ch/cling
so i'm still exploring the infrastructure needed to make this work
As i wrote in my previous message to this list:

> I have a background in c++14 and improving my knowledge in python3, and i
> wonder if a proposal about improving the python editor in blender is
> something that has any chance of being accepted.

> I got the idea while developing a small project where i needed to convert
> an equirectangular texture to another format, using texture baking from a
> lat-lon sphere to another solid, and finding that it was easier for me to
> do this work by hand than to workout a script to automate the process.

to which Andreas Klostermann replied
> It may be possible to use Blender as a Jupyter "kernel". Using asyncio, it
> may be possible to implement the jupyter protocol which in turn uses
zeromq.

Which is obviously a better solution for my use case than recreating some
of the features of jupyter inside blender.
So this i why i'm writing a new proposal, to gather feedback on this idea

As this is a use case tailored to developers, i'm thinking that writing an
addon is best suited than trying to include this in blender.

what will i need?
right now i know that i will need to understand blender addon architecture
and jupyter kernel architecture,
that i need to integrate zmq api in a portable way, as this is the pipe
used to comunicate with jupyter,
find the right ux pattern to make this addon useful and not an hassle to
use bigger than the current way to use python inside blender.

-- 
Andrea Barbadoro  https://github.com/andijcr  _
Mail: andij.cr at gmail.com _