Proposal: Add shortcut to nothing in Kino.Shorts

[christhekeele]

As I make more sophisticated Kino UIs:

• I find myself using Kino.Shorts more to streamline large complicated blocks of Elixir Kino UI code
• I find myself invariably terminating those blocks with Kino.nothing() since I've taken control of the rendering process

In the spirit of Kino.Shorts reducing the times you have to type Kino, I thought a shortcut function might make sense. For a use-case extracted from a pattern I've used several times now, see the second example in the function docs.

The name I've chosen here (output_nothing) is debatable:

• On one hand it is two characters longer than the function it is aliasing
• On the other hand it reads more clearly and declaratively than scattering kind of context-less Kino.nothing()s at the end of code blocks

[christhekeele]

I do feel like including a verb in the function name improves the readability (here and in most function names). Kino.nothing() is a noun because it is returning the special t:Kino.nothing atom, but once aliased just calling nothing() tells me nothing about what the function call accomplishes.

I am not sure I like nothing/1 because it gives the impression something is done with the argument.

Perhaps a different verb would make you feel more comfortable with it, say ignore_output/1?

[josevalim]

The issue is that it is inconsistent with everything else. audio, mermaid, etc are all outputs, we don't label any of them.

Perhaps a different verb would make you feel more comfortable with it, say ignore_output/1?

Not really, it has no relationship with the input in any case. :)

[christhekeele]

The issue is that it is inconsistent with everything else. audio, mermaid, etc are all outputs, we don't label any of them.

I see what you mean, they are all nouns too. Despite that, I still like the readable verb form and /1 arity, since the fact that the function does not return something kino-renderable makes it kind of a non-entity in Kino terms (and therefore not a noun). While Kino.render(nothing()) reads nicely, providing the verb context, just nothing() does not to me.

If you're not sold on verb-name or arity-1, though, I think it's fine to close this PR, as the exact same thing as your proposed alterations can be accomplished with more clarity via import Kino, only: [nothing: 0]

[josevalim]

I am ok with adding nothing/0 as a shortcut, as the functions here are only meant to be shortcut, not new functionality. But if you don't see a value in that, we can close this.