Remove the notebookEditorDecorationType api proposal

[mjbvz]

The notebookEditorDecorationType currently is not on track for finalization. In order to decide what to do with it, we would like to know how this api is currently being used and if there would be any big concerns around removing it

Here are the current consumers:

• Jupyter @rchiodo @DonJayamanne
• Jupyter powertoys @rchiodo @DonJayamanne
• Dot Net Interactive @brettfo, @colombod

Please check if your extension is using this api. If it is, can you explain how the api is used today and if there are alternative approach you could use to implement the functionality?

[rchiodo]

We're using it here:
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-jupyter/blob/bf9b966c06a976c4bfdefebc0eee4012da76bf82/src/interactive-window/interactiveWindow.node.ts#L666.

Personally I think we can just drop the usage. It's to give a background decoration to a cell when we scroll to it in the interactive window (which I think is kinda weird)

[mjbvz]

Thanks @rchiodo! Should I open an issue against Jupyter tracking its removal?

[rchiodo]

Good idea. Just did :)

[mjbvz]

Confirmed dot net is not using this

[mjbvz]

Ah looks like Jupyter powertoys started using this now too? @rchiodo Can you please let me know if this was just copy/pasted over or if this is a real user

[rchiodo]

I don't think it is? The enabled list is this:

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-jupyter-powertoys/blob/2dfc5d244f6259a4298d8b817c9b04d559f02fe1/package.json#L46

    "enabledApiProposals": [
        "notebookEditor",
        "notebookEditorEdit"
    ],

This issue is about the 'notebookEditorDecorationType', I think?

[mjbvz]

Great! Thanks for confirming. I'll go ahead and update its list of proposed apis to match what I see in the package.json

[mjbvz]

All consumers have now been removed but we'll hold of on removing this API until a new version of Jupyter is published

[mjbvz]

@alyssajotice Can you please let me know if liveshare is using this api? It's not listed as an official consumer but @rebornix thought you may still be using it to render user names on cells

[alyssajotice]

Live Share does not use this API.

[mjbvz]

All users have now been removed and we've also removed the implementation

Thanks for the help everyone!

[rdeline]

I'm not an official customer, but we have a prototype in Microsoft Research that uses this feature to indicate which of several cell outputs is currently visible (eyeball below). Is there any suggested substitute for this feature?

[mjbvz]

@rdeline Is the eyeball shown for a specific line or for the entire cell?

[rdeline]

The eyeball is shown for a specific line (line 7 above). In this image, only line 7 has the decoration, but in general we allow users to select an arbitrary set of lines. If you're curious, there's an output render below the code (not shown) that is sensitive to which line(s) the user has selected. The output render shows visualizations specific to those chosen lines. (It makes our notebooks really compact, while still allowing quick access to every visual output.)

[mjbvz]

@rebornix Would the standard editor decorators apis work for their use case?

[rebornix]

@mjbvz @rdeline the editor decorations api is responsible for this feature, I don't think we need to use the notebook one.