Blink Display error

[rand5]

When I try to display a plot via ElectronPlot I am getting an error message in a pop-up window. Here is a MWE:

pl = plot(scatter(;y=rand(4)))
_p = ElectronPlot(pl)
display(_p)

I checked out the master of PlotlyJS and updated Rsvg.jl and Blink.jl but these had no impact.

[sglyon]

Hmm. That's not good.

How are you running this code? Meaning is it at the Julia real inside your command prompt, from a jupyter notebook, inside Atom/Juno, inside VS Code, etc.?

[rand5]

I am running it inside a jupyter notebook. Julia 0.6.1

[sglyon]

Can you get your example to work from the REPL inside your command prompt?

(Sorry vicarious debugging to see where the issue might be)

[rand5]

Just tried it in the command prompt and got an error after running the following:

using PlotlyJS
pl=plot(scatter(;y=rand(4)))

[rand5]

In the command prompt I get App threw an error when running [SyntaxError: Unexpected token {]

[sglyon]

Can you try Pkg.build("PlotlyJS") to ensure that you are using the latest version of the plotly.js javascript?

[rand5]

Just tried this:

and got the same pop-up with error message

[sglyon]

Ok, let's check versions of packages.

What does Pkg.status() return?

[rand5]

21 required packages:
 - CSV                           0.2.1
 - Cascadia                      0.2.0
 - Combinatorics                 0.5.0
 - Dierckx                       0.3.0
 - Distances                     0.5.0
 - Distributions                 0.15.0
 - GeometryTypes                 0.4.4
 - Gumbo                         0.4.0
 - HypothesisTests               0.6.0
 - IJulia                        1.6.2
 - ImageMagick                   0.5.0
 - Images                        0.12.0
 - Interact                      0.6.3
 - NLopt                         0.3.6
 - PackageCompiler               0.2.0
 - PlotlyJS                      0.9.0+             master
 - Plots                         0.15.0
 - PyPlot                        2.3.2
 - Reactive                      0.6.0
 - Requests                      0.5.1
 - Rsvg                          0.2.0
122 additional packages:
 - AbstractFFTs                  0.2.1
 - AbstractNumbers               0.1.1
 - AbstractTrees                 0.1.0
 - AxisAlgorithms                0.2.0
 - AxisArrays                    0.2.0
 - BinDeps                       0.8.6
 - Blink                         0.6.0
 - BufferedStreams               0.3.3
 - Cairo                         0.4.0
 - Calculus                      0.2.2
 - CatIndices                    0.1.0
 - CategoricalArrays             0.3.3
 - CodecZlib                     0.4.2
 - Codecs                        0.4.0
 - ColorBrewer                   0.3.1
 - ColorTypes                    0.6.6
 - ColorVectorSpace              0.5.2
 - Colors                        0.8.2
 - CommonSubexpressions          0.0.1
 - Compat                        0.50.0
 - ComputationalResources        0.2.0
 - Conda                         0.7.1
 - Contour                       0.4.0
 - CoordinateTransformations     0.4.1
 - CustomUnitRanges              0.1.0
 - DataFrames                    0.11.5
 - DataStreams                   0.3.4
 - DataStructures                0.7.4
 - DiffResults                   0.0.3
 - DiffRules                     0.0.3
 - DocStringExtensions           0.4.3
 - DualNumbers                   0.3.0
 - FFTViews                      0.1.0
 - FFTW                          0.0.4
 - FileIO                        0.6.1
 - FixedPointNumbers             0.4.3
 - Fontconfig                    0.1.1
 - ForwardDiff                   0.7.3
 - FreeType                      1.3.0
 - FreeTypeAbstraction           0.1.0
 - GLAbstraction                 0.6.1              master
 - GLFW                          1.5.0
 - GLVisualize                   0.6.1+             master
 - GLWindow                      0.7.1
 - Graphics                      0.2.0
 - Gtk                           0.13.1
 - Hiccup                        0.1.1
 - HttpCommon                    0.4.0
 - HttpParser                    0.3.0
 - HttpServer                    0.2.0
 - IdentityRanges                0.1.0
 - ImageAxes                     0.4.0
 - ImageCore                     0.5.0
 - ImageFiltering                0.2.3
 - ImageMetadata                 0.4.0
 - ImageMorphology               0.0.2
 - ImageTransformations          0.4.1
 - IndirectArrays                0.3.0
 - Interpolations                0.7.3
 - IntervalSets                  0.1.1
 - IterTools                     0.2.1
 - JSON                          0.16.4
 - Juno                          0.4.0
 - LaTeXStrings                  0.3.0
 - Lazy                          0.12.0
 - LibExpat                      0.4.1
 - Libz                          0.2.4
 - MacroTools                    0.4.0
 - Makie                         0.0.0-             master (unregistered)
 - MappedArrays                  0.0.7
 - MathProgBase                  0.7.0
 - MbedTLS                       0.5.5
 - Measures                      0.1.0
 - Media                         0.3.0
 - MeshIO                        0.1.2
 - Missings                      0.2.5
 - ModernGL                      0.2.1
 - Mustache                      0.3.0
 - Mux                           0.2.3
 - NaNMath                       0.3.0
 - NamedTuples                   4.0.0
 - Nullables                     0.0.3
 - OffsetArrays                  0.4.2
 - PDMats                        0.8.0
 - Packing                       0.1.0
 - PaddedViews                   0.2.0
 - PlotThemes                    0.2.0
 - PlotUtils                     0.4.4
 - Polynomials                   0.2.1
 - PyCall                        1.15.0
 - QuadGK                        0.2.0
 - Quaternions                   0.3.0
 - RangeArrays                   0.2.0
 - Ratios                        0.2.0
 - RecipesBase                   0.2.3
 - Reexport                      0.1.0
 - Requires                      0.4.3
 - Rmath                         0.3.2
 - Roots                         0.5.0
 - Rotations                     0.6.1
 - SHA                           0.5.6
 - SIUnits                       0.1.0
 - ShowItLikeYouBuildIt          0.2.0
 - Showoff                       0.1.1
 - SignedDistanceFields          0.2.0
 - SimpleTraits                  0.5.1
 - SnoopCompile                  0.2.0
 - SortingAlgorithms             0.2.0
 - SpecialFunctions              0.3.8
 - StaticArrays                  0.6.6
 - StatsBase                     0.19.5
 - StatsFuns                     0.5.0
 - TexExtensions                 0.1.0
 - TiledIteration                0.1.0
 - TranscodingStreams            0.4.1
 - URIParser                     0.3.0
 - UnicodeFun                    0.1.0
 - WeakRefStrings                0.4.1
 - WebSockets                    0.4.0
 - WinRPM                        0.3.1
 - WoodburyMatrices              0.2.2
 - ZMQ                           0.5.1

[sglyon]

ahh ok, Blink 0.6 updated the underlying version of electron.

Can you run

using Blink
Blink.AtomShell.install()

And try again?

[rand5]

Ok, that worked. So when I updated Blink, it didn't update electron as well? Should Blink.AtomShell.install() be called each time Blink is updated?

Thanks for the help sorting this out

[sglyon]

Great! glad we sorted it out.

So Blink.jl does not automatically install electron (formerly known as Atom Shell -- hence the naming inside Blink) in case some users only ever need Blink from inside Atom/Juno, in which case Blink just uses Atom's electron.

I think it might be worthwhile for me to put Blink.AtomShell.install() inside the PlotlyJS/deps/build.jl file so that the Blink display is always available and electron is always up to date.

I've hesitated doing that because some users might not use the electron display and at least on my OSX machine it takes up 121 MB, but it would resolve issues like this...

Thoughts welcome

[sglyon]

Actually, perhaps the best solution would be to update the Blink/deps/build.jl to check and see if electron is installed. If it is, then update the installation. Otherwise do nothing.

That still preserves the opt-in nature of downloading electron, but makes sure that if a user has ever opted in that the electron version and Blink.jl version are always in sync

cc @pfitzseb @MikeInnes