Dynamic Notebook Environment for Wolfram Language

Made by the cooperation of physicists and programmers. Driven by solving real-life cases in science ⚗️, math 🧮 and teaching 📚

written with love using freeware Wolfram Engine, JavaScript and WLX

WLJS Notebook Demonstration Project 🎉 A collection of various notebooks showcasing examples of how to use the Wolfram Language and the dynamic features of our frontend

Documentation & Tutorials 📔

Wolfram Language Introduction 🐺

Freeware implementation of Wolfram Language

Telegram support chat 💬

Recommended Wolfram Engine: 13.3 or higher

All algorithms, functions, and other components of the Wolfram Language provided by the Wolfram Engine are the intellectual property of Wolfram Research, Inc.

Special thanks to our co-developer @KirillBelovTest (Wolfram Language Web Stack developer)

To help maintain this open-source project ❤️

• GitHub Sponsors
• PayPal

Any amount (one-time or monthly) is appreciated, and your profile will be permanently displayed on this page. Thank you for helping us!

Showcase

Blog posts

🔗 Link Pages of real-life problems solved using WLJS Notebook and published as interactive notebooks runnning in your browser. Try it out

WLJS Notebook Demonstration Project

🔗 Link Notebooks posted as static web pages showcase various examples that demonstrate how to use the Wolfram Language and the dynamic features of our frontend.

Contributing

See here

Media

• Wolfram R&D 📽️ WL Javascript Notebook
• YTS 📽️ You don't need to program your figures manually
• YTS 📽️ How to do Dynamics in Computation Notebook
• YTS 📽️ We made AI Copilot in your Notebook 🤖
• YTS 📽️ AI Copilot in your Notebook. Part 2 🤖

Publications 📢

• Habrahabr October 2024: Динамическая презентация или как закодить слайд с помощью Markdown и WL (Russian language only)
• Habrahabr Septempber 2024: Обзор изменений в WLJS Notebook (Russian language only)
• Medium May 2024: Reinventing dynamic and portable notebooks with Javascript and Wolfram Language
• Yandex Open Source Jam April 2024: Dynamic notebook interface + Wolfram Language (Russian language only)
• DPG2024 Berlin March 2024: Computational Notebook as a Modern Multitool for Scientists, Slides
• Habrahabr October 2023 Open-source блокнот Wolfram Language или как воссоздать минимальное ядро Mathematica на Javascript и не только (Russian language only)
• Habrahabr October 2023 Wolfram Language JavaScript Frontend (Russian language only)

Highlights

Not a typical Jupyter-like notebook environment 🧨

It supports dynamics, GUI building blocks, and powerful Mathematica syntax out of the box.

No more static graphics! Each primitive of Graphics/Graphics3D was recreated from scratch using d3.js and THREE.js libraries. Most native plotting functions of Mathematica are supported.

Command Palette and GUI-in-Code Emulation 🎨

Native Math Input in the Code Editor 🧮

Write beautiful equations between lines of normal Wolfram Language expressions.

There is no need to lift your fingers from the keyboard 🎹

Shortcuts

• Alt+2, Cmd+2 hide/show input cell
• Ctrl+/ make fraction on selected
• Ctrl+6 make superscript on selected
• Ctrl+2 make square root on selected
• Ctrl+- make subscript on selected

Or use toolboxes for complex structures such as integrals, sum, Greek letters

Inline Dynamic Tool for Tuning 2D/3D Positions

Export to HTML / Markdown / MDX 🗜️

An entire notebook can be exported to a standalone .html file keeping all data inside. No internet dependency, no additional software is required for viewing a notebook

No more static pictures with code

Even if you embed it to your blog page

Deploy as a web-page

still experimental feature

See some interactive examples from our blog page

• THz Time Domain modelling in 10 lines
• FDTD Method of Solving Maxwell's Equations

Later, once opened using WLJS Notebook application, it is unpacked back to a normal editable format.

AI Assistant 🤖

We deeply integrated ChatGPT, so that AI can have a read/write acccess to your notebook

Data-Driven Slides 🛝

Make a presentation right from the notebook.

Real-Time Interactivity ⏱️

Follows the mouse pointer and performs complex calculations

You do not need to target 60FPS, Javascript will interpolate the transitions smoothly

A toy-like fluid simulation is also possible

Many More

• Autocomplete (no LSP support for now)
• JavaScript cells deeply integrated with Wolfram Language
• HTML cells
• Markdown, KaTeX, Excalidraw
• Command palette with built-in widgets for assisting you in typing equations, capturing images and others
• Mermaid diagrams

Offline documentation 🩺

WLJS Notebook runs locally and belongs to you (no cloud-based stuff involved). No internet connection is needed.

Sponsors (one-time or monthly) ☺️

• @VadimBim, ???
• Gani Ganapathi, USA
• Jon L. Woodard, USA
• @MitsuhaMiyamizu, Mars

Installation 🛠️

The freeware Wolfram Engine is required (Version 13.3 is preferable). Activation can be done later using WLJS Notebook App.

On macOS, if you have Homebrew installed, you can install it through Homebrew Cask:

brew install --cask wolfram-engine

a side note for OSX/Linux users If you face any issues, try to install avahi daemon and libuv.

Desktop App ✨

Download from the releases section.

CLI

You can start it from the terminal like VSCode by typing

wljs .

Notes for Windows users

Works good

Note for Debian users

Works good. You might need to install libuv dependency

Note for Ubuntu users

There will be a problem with starting related to a new AppArmor issue om Ubuntu 24.04. A temporal fix will be to lift the restrictions globally

sudo sysctl -w kernel.apparmor_restrict_unprivileged_userns=0

You can always bypass this complexity by using [console application instead](#Standalone Server) (see Standalone Server or Docker).

Note for MacOS users

Works good.

Again, if you have Homebrew installed, you can install this app using:

brew install --cask wljs-notebook

Docker Container

contributed by @yloose

See here

Standalone Server

Desktop application is just a wrapper with a built-in Chromium browser, context menu bindings and file associations. WLJS Notebook itself is a web-based application and can run using just wolframscript with no external services or any other programs.

Clone this repository and run:

wolframscript -f Scripts/start.wls

or on a specific hostname

wolframscript -f Scripts/start.wls host 0.0.0.0 http 8080 ws 8081 ws2 8082 docs 8085

that will open an HTTP server on 8080 port with 8081, 8082 used for realtime communication and docs pages at 8085

Extra arguments

• set the home folder (overrides settings)

wolframscript -f Scripts/start.wls folder "Demos"

• disable autolaunch of the evaluation kernel

wolframscript -f Scripts/start.wls noautolaunch True

• disable autotest

wolframscript -f Scripts/start.wls bypasstest True

A side note for servers with no desktop interface

You might need to install the following (for Image and some other graphics to work properly) libraries.

Shortcuts 🎬

working in both: browser and desktop application

UI

• Ctrl+S, Cmd+S save notebook
• Alt+., Cmd+. abort evaluation
• Ctrl+P, Cmd+P open command palette
• Shift+Enter evaluate current cell
• Ctrl+F, Cmd+F search/replace inside a cell

Cells

• Alt+2, Cmd+2 hide/show input cell
• Ctrl+/ make fraction on selected
• Ctrl+6 make superscript on selected
• Ctrl+2 make square root on selected
• Ctrl+- make subscript on selected

Package System

WLJS Notebook fully supports the native Wolfram Language paclets/packages system and cna be installed from the command palette (paste there a Github url to a package). It means most packages will work like in Mathematica with some limitations on dynamics (DynamicModule, Opener and etc).

Technology Stack

Wolfram Language, WLX, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C

Frameworks & Libraries

• Vanilla JS
• TailwindCSS
• Electron (only for the desktop app, used as a wrapper)
• THREE.js, D3.js (graphics libraries)
• Tone.js (sound library)
• CodeMirror 6 (core cell editor)
• Reveal.js (library for slides), Marked.js (markdown cells), KaTeX.js (math equations), Mermaid (diagram cells), Excalidraw (drawings inside cells), Plotly.js (alternative library for plotting)
• XTerm.js (internal terminal)

Inspired By

• Wolfram Mathematica
• Jupyter Notebook
• Observable.io
• Wolfram Language Notebook VSCode
• Mathics

License

GNU GPLv3