interactive elements do not work in google colab

[maxpietsch]

when using matplotlib notebook, the main image does not show, with inline the plot does not react to user input. Example:

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1o_cE7t8b4Hqv5BY7w202c5CLE4IsEQea?usp=sharing

[spinicist]

Hello,

It looks like the way to enable IPyWidgets has changed again. I have had a lot of problems in the past with getting the back-end correct, and it seems to change on a semi-regular basis. Keeping up is a chore.

I suspect the correct back-end is now %matplotlib widget, however this fails in Colab because the ipympl module is not installed. I tried on my local machine, but even after installing ipympl it still fails, I think inside the call to plt.ion() at line 34 of jupyter.py.

If you have any time to investigate further (e.g. find an up to date tutorial on how to use widgets) I'd be very grateful.

[spinicist]

Hello again, @nirso submitted #7 which fixes the interactive elements in some environments, but sadly not in Google colab. Apparently this is a known issue: https://github.com/googlecolab/colabtools/issues/86

Hopefully they will implement a fix sometime.