(Warning: ignorant rant coming up)

Like everyone else who’s ever used it, I love the IPython notebook. It’s not only an awesomely productive environment to work in, it’s also the most powerful weapon in the Python evangelist’s arsenal (suck it, Matlab).

I also think it’s not hard to imagine a world where scientific papers are all just literate programs. And the notebook is probably one of the best tools for literate programming around in any language. The intregration of markdown and LaTeX/MathJax into the notebook is just fantastic.

But it does have one weakness as a literate programming tool. The default typography is ugly as sin.

There are several issues, but two major ones are easily fixable.

Long lines

By far the biggest issue is that the text and input cells extend to 100% of the window width. Most people keep their browser windows open wider than is comfortable reading width, so you end up with long hard-to-read lines of text in the markdown cells.

And for the code, it would be nice to have the code cell discourage you from long lines. The variable width cells don’t. I’m an 80-character anal ...