[isabelle-dev] Isabelle/VSCode as bundled application (and Electron and Node.js)

[Makarius]

On 25/03/2022 13:38, Makarius wrote:
> *** Isabelle/VSCode Prover IDE ***
> 
> * Command-line tools "isabelle electron" and "isabelle node" provide
> access to the underlying technologies of VSCodium, for use in other
> applications. This essentially provides a freely programmable Chromium
> browser engine that works uniformly on all platforms.

Here are some further hints on Electron and Node.js.


   * "isabelle node" opens a REPL to the JavaScript/Node platform. Here are 
some examples for its prompt:

$ isabelle node
Welcome to Node.js v14.16.0.
Type ".help" for more information.
 > var a = 1
undefined
 > var b = 2
undefined
 > a + b
3

   * "isabelle electron" opens a "splash screen" application about Electron by 
default. It is more interesting to open a different application. I have 
prepared a tiny example here:

$ hg clone https://makarius.sketis.net/repos/test-electron
$ isabelle electron --app=test-electron

Thus we get a high-end Chromium browser window with minimal effort. It works 
uniformly on all platforms. Full HTML5 and PDF are supported without further 
ado. But this is not a proper web browser, e.g. there is no navigation bar.


Potential applications of Electron for Isabelle:

   * A portable PDF viewer via pdfjs, with our own add-ons to manage 
Isabelle-specific URLs. Thus the PDF can point back to a running Prover IDE, 
for example. (This already works with our PIDE HTTP server setup and the 
bundle pdfjs component).

   * Other JavaScript-based viewers or editors, e.g. for certain diagrams. 
This will require more work to connect to Isabelle/PIDE, though.

   * For Isabelle/jEdit, it will run in a separate window. For Isabelle/VSCode 
it can be incorporated directly into the WebviewPanel of the editor (e.g. see 
the Markdown preview).


Summary: We have a whole new world of technology based on Chromium/HTML/CSS/JS 
bundled with Isabelle. The file-system footprint is about 1.2 GB for all 
platforms together, and 300MB for just one platform (for end-user Isabelle 
application bundles).


	Makarius