Jupyter Interactive Window would be better than plain-text terminal

[david-cortes]

I really like how the Jupyter Interactive Window from the Jupyter extension works when used as "terminal" for Python and for R (after enabling settings "jupyter.interactiveWindow.textEditor.executeSelection": true and "interactiveWindow.executeWithShiftEnter": true):

• It divides execution units into cells - e.g. if I open a Python or R file, and execute it statement by statement with Shift+Enter in non-Positron VScode, each execution statement is put into a separate cell, which I can expand or shrink, and shows how long it took to execute the whole thing.
• It's smart about rendering objects like sequences or data frames (output is formatted into an HTML table which is much nicer to look at and can be copy-pasted alongside with its formatting).
• It applies syntax highlighting to all the statements that went into the console.
• It numerates the execution units.
  

In my opinion, it would make for a much nicer user experience to have this as a terminal for both Python and R instead of the current plain-text terminal.

[ntluong95]

Might be something relevant to #3802?

[juliasilge]

The Positron console is the component that we use for this kind of interactive, exploratory code execution:

If you are looking for a workflow where you have a literate programming tool plus an interactive console, in Positron you would currently use Quarto. (You can even try converting your .ipynb to .qmd.)

We don't currently have support for a Jupyter notebook sharing a kernel with a Console instance but that feature request is tracked in #3801, if you have any additional context to add there.

[david-cortes]

@juliasilge To clarify: this jupyter interactive window is used in VScode when executing lines or sections in .py files. The outputs it shows can be saved as .ipynb but it is used more or less in the same way as the 'console' pane in RStudio.