Whiteboard feature - edges

[nikkujensen]

I have been exploring some of the Whiteboard features and there is one I don't understand. It is the edges. There isn't any documentation on it in the docs nor is there a detailed description on the CoCalc website.

Could someone fill me in on what this feature is? The best I can guess since it is listed under the Jupyter Cells functionality on the website, is that it has something to do with the execution order of cells, maybe?

[williamstein]

Could someone fill me in on what this feature is?

Currently they are 100% cosmetic, i.e., just for looks. However, as you guessed, in the future I hope to impose an execute order that is informed by edges (currently there's no "execute all" functionality).

I would love for you to share any and all thoughts you have about the whiteboard. I wrote it pretty quickly to have a first usable tool to experiment with before getting too bogged down in features, so there is still much left to do. A lot of functionality involving separate panels, i.e., "Table of Contents", "Pages", and "Search", got added after the first release in order to make whiteboards more usable.

[nikkujensen]

Thanks for the reply and clarification!

I will keep thinking about it, but I don't have any concise feedback for now. I recently shared this feature of CoCalc with a friend, and he was ecstatic about its potential. He is a web developer and saw this as a fantastic idea for collaborating whiteboard-like but with executable code for a project.

[binary10]

The whiteboard is absolute anarchy.. and I do love the freedom, no matter how dangerous it is.

[williamstein]

Cool, and nice to see you using it in dark mode!

[williamstein]

There's a very interesting discussion regarding how to use the edges to impact and organize code evaluation here: #6168