Share a Notebook

A .ipynb file is for someone who has Jupyter. For everyone else — a colleague who wants to read the result, a reviewer who wants the code, a repository that wants a plain script — Zasper writes the notebook out in three other shapes.

The Export Menu

The button is at the end of the notebook’s toolbar, past the kernel and separated from it: everything to its left does something to the notebook, and this one takes a copy of it away.

It exports what is on the screen, not what is on disk. Unsaved edits and the output the kernel produced a moment ago are in the file you get, which is usually what you want and worth knowing when it is not. Nothing is sent anywhere: the conversion happens in the browser and the file lands in your downloads.

HTML Page

A page anyone can open, with the code highlighted and the output under it, styled in Zasper’s own light theme so it reads the same on any machine. This is the row to pick when the reader should not have to install anything.

It is the one format that asks a question first. Export as HTML offers two checkboxes:

• Include code — off gives a report: prose and results, no source.
• Include outputs — off gives the notebook as a blank worksheet, code and no results.

Both off writes nothing worth having, so the dialog will not let you. One thing to know before you send the page: a figure in it is a picture. Interactive plots stop being interactive and widgets stop existing altogether, because both need a kernel and a page has none.

Markdown

The notebook as a document: markdown cells as themselves, code cells as fenced blocks tagged with the kernel’s language, output underneath. This is the shape that drops into a README, a wiki or a pull request, and the one to pick when the text matters more than the run.

Script

The code alone, in the kernel’s language, with the markdown cells kept as comments so the reasoning survives. The extension comes from the kernel the notebook ran on rather than from a guess — a Python notebook gives you .py, a Deno one .ts.

Use it when a notebook has turned into something that should be a module, or when a reviewer wants to read the logic without the JSON around it.

What Stays Behind

Every export is a copy: the notebook itself is untouched, and none of the three can be opened back up as a notebook. To keep working on it, keep the .ipynb — the exports are for the people who are not going to run it.

Notebook Support lists what renders in a notebook and therefore what can appear in an export, and Track Changes with Git covers keeping the notebook itself reviewable.