jupyter_rfb

Remote Frame Buffer for Jupyter

Introduction

The jupyter_rfb library provides a widget (an ipywidgets subclass) that can be used in the Jupyter notebook and in JupyterLab to implement a remote frame-buffer.

Images that are generated at the server are streamed to the client (Jupyter) where they are shown. Events (such as mouse interactions) are streamed in the other direction, where the server can react by generating new images.

This remote-frame-buffer approach can be an effective method for server-generated visualizations to be dispayed in Jupyter notebook/lab. For example visualization created by tools like vispy, datoviz or pygfx.

Scope

The above defines the full scope of this library; it's a base widget that other libraries can extend for different purposes. Consequently, these libraries don't have to each invent a Jupyter widget, and in this library we can focus on doing that one task really well.

Installation

To install use pip:

$ pip install jupyter_rfb

For better performance, also pip install simplejpeg or pip install pillow. On older versions of Jupyter notebook/lab an extra step might be needed to enable the widget.

To install into an existing conda environment:

$ conda install -c conda-forge jupyter-rfb

Developer notes

See the contributor guide on how to install jupyter_rfb in a dev environment, and on how to contribute.

License

MIT