GLMakie in VSCode single plot popout

Tooling VS Code
,
1

I like the plot pane in VSCode, and I wish to use it by default. I also love how GLMakie plots scale up and down in size as I ajust the width of the plotting pane.

But sometimes I want to interact with the plot, for data-inspection, panning or zooming. I used to be able to call current_figure() in the buildt-in terminal, and I would get a standalone window that is interactable. Now, it just creates a new plot in the plotting pane.

I know that I can change the backend to WGLMakie to get interactivity in the build-in plotting pane, but

  1. It seems less responsive and stable,
  2. When interacting with a plot, it is nice to have the standalone window fill the screen, and
  3. I prefer not having to juggle two backends.

So is there a way to get a single plot in the standalone window, while still using the buildt-in plot pane by default?

2

If you call Makie.inline!(true) you get the plot pane, and for false you get the window in GLMakie

3

Not really, unfortunatly.

When I call

Makie.inline!(false)
current_figure()

from the script, I get a new plot in the plot-pane. So I can not see any difference between calling Makie.inline!(false) and Makie.inline!(true), before calling current_figure() from the script.

When I call

julia> Makie.inline!(false)

julia> current_figure()

in the build in terminal, there is a difference - nothing happens. When I call

julia> Makie.inline!(true)

julia> current_figure()

again, I again get new plots in the plot-pane.

So I appriciate the reply, and it sounds like the right approach, but it was unfortunatly not helpful in my case.

4

Maybe @sdanisch can explain it better, the display system is a complicated thing.

5

You can temporarily disable the plot pane, e.g. at

image
image905×549 34.7 KB

The other option would be to call e.g. display(MakieDisplay(), p) (for some value of MakieDisplay), which should force the display system to circumvent the VSCode display.

6

The Disable plot pane option was not available from that drop down for me, but I found it via the Ctrl+shift+p thingy (command palette?)

But when I do that, I get nothing happening from the script, and the following from the terminal:

julia> current_figure()
Scene (800px, 600px):
  18 Plots:
    ├ Combined{Makie.poly, Tuple{Vector{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ MakieCore.Text{Tuple{String}}
    ├ Lines{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ MakieCore.Text{Tuple{Vector{Tuple{AbstractString, Point{2, Float32}}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ LineSegments{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ MakieCore.Text{Tuple{String}}
    ├ Lines{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ MakieCore.Text{Tuple{Vector{Tuple{AbstractString, Point{2, Float32}}}}}
    ├ Lines{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    ├ Lines{Tuple{Vector{Point{2, Float32}}}}
    └ MakieCore.Text{Tuple{String}}
  1 Child Scene:
    └ Scene (734px, 541px)

So it seems like the fallback IO channel does not work as desired. So I would have to call display with the correct display channel. But I have no idea how to list available IO channels, and a quick google-search got me no further.

7

Hm, so Makie’s use of the display system is kinda wonky imo.

Anyways, you can switch between the plot pane with GLMakie.inline!(false) to enable it and GLMakie.inline!(true) to disable it.

8

So I restarted VSCode for unrelated reasons, and now I get the standalone window when sending the plotting-command to the terminal. This is the behaviour described in the original post. Weird…

So then I am back to evaluating lines of a script to send the plot to the plot pane, and sending it to the terminal for interaction.

9

That sounds buggy. There shouldn’t be any difference between the REPL and inline evaluation.

10

It indeed feels like a buggy hacky way to do things. But it works great for me.

Reminds me of a meme about some changelog saying a bug was fixed where the CPU would overheat with a certain command, and someone commenting that that was how they liked heating their room without getting up, and asking for a way to keep the old behaviour xD

11

Yeah, as soon as I figure out why this happens you’ll need to find another way to heat your room.

12

There it is! Yes, that is the meme xD

Here is a GIF showing the current behaviour, which I like
EUdo3TD9KS

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