Contextual help

One of the great benefits of python notebook is the exploratory nature of it. I personally find the contextual help window in jupyter lab a very helpful feature that makes the exploratory data analysis very easy by providing a fluid guide for the many API’s that one might have to try. I don’t know how big of an ask this is, but it would be much appreciated to provide this in VScode notebook editor.

Below is a screen shot of what I am referring to in jupyter lab. The functionality is that by clicking on each function, the docstring for that function is show in the contextual help window.

[allefeld]

I would like to strongly support this!

I have been switching between Python IDEs on a search for the best, and have now arrived at VS Code which in my experience is superior in many ways.

But one feature I really miss from Jupyter Lab is the automatically updated contextual help panel.

As I wrote in issue microsoft/vscode-python#11655 linked to above, the current pop-up crushes everything together, is too small to read long texts, and disappears too easily on mouse movement. It is also often hard to trigger.

Yes, it is possible to use the IPython-style ?, but that means to open a new cell, type in the command, then scroll through a small viewport. For many packages, documentation can be many pages long, I think that deserves a dedicated panel.

[javierbq]

@rchiodo not the same, Jupiter’s automatic contextual help is just amazing.

Being able to see the state of variables and documentation just by clicking on a cell is just great. Huge productivity boost.