Negotiate terms re: Ctrl+Enter/Cmd+Enter with the Quarto extension

[jennybc]

I am someone who, apparently, has used Ctrl+Enter for years to run 1 line of R code in RStudio, as opposed to Cmd+Enter, even though I'm on macOS.

This works in Positron as of #1209.

I just tried (and failed) to use Ctrl+Enter to run a line of R code from a vignette, where we're getting .Rmd support from the Quarto extension. That leads to a rather puzzling refusal:

Puzzling because I am staring at a perfectly healthy R runtime and I can run whole chunks. Of course what I should do is use Cmd+Enter, which works!

Slack discussion lead to this issue.

@jmcphers says:

When the Quarto extension is run in Positron, it'd be preferable if it didn't register Cmd+Enter at all, because we want our Cmd+Enter from Positron to be used instead (as it is now very smart about running statements vs. lines, etc.)

Of course, we'd first need to fix our Cmd+Enter/Ctrl+Enter function so it can pick up the embedded language at the cursor position vs. the editor language.

Capturing (some of) what Positron > Settings > Keyboard shortcuts shows for me right now, which also illustrates the problem:

[jennybc]

From @jjallaire:

Another way to do this is that the Quarto extension has the concept of execution back ends that know how to intelligently execute statements (this actually works with the current VS Code R extension). So if you provide an API that is executeStatement() which takes no arguments then I can call that and it will all work.

[jennybc]

The behaviour I originally noted is still present.

[jmcphers]

feedback from @EmilHvitfeldt via @juliasilge:

He uses Quarto a lot and really feels the pain around the lack of keyboard shortcuts and inability to use Cmd + Enter to send code from a Quarto chunk to the console. The Quarto experience feels a lot more rough than the R package development experience.

https://positpbc.slack.com/archives/C04FPQK3H9C/p1710266024900919

[jmcphers]

Came up in beta feedback too: https://github.com/posit-dev/positron-beta/discussions/71

[jmcphers]

Toehold: Here's where Quarto's executor connects to the vscode-R extension to trigger statement-aware execution.

https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto/blob/0e27dc40a96044979bf1fdf1b34a2857ded3b21b/apps/vscode/src/host/executors.ts#L84-L95

[jjallaire]

Here is where we call Positron: https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto/blob/0e27dc40a96044979bf1fdf1b34a2857ded3b21b/apps/vscode/src/host/hooks.ts#L54-L69

You just need to implement an executeSelection() method there that tells Positron to do statement aware execution and everything should just work (that's effectively what we do for the VS Code R Extension in the code Jonathan linked to above).

[juliasilge]

Two PRs so far:

• Add executeSelection method to the extension host cell executor quarto-dev/quarto#436
• Update 'workbench.action.positronConsole.executeCode' to be used in Quarto #3107

I currently believe we'll need to also update the statement range provider in ark, and then also look at the Python experience. So basically, you know, everything. 😩

[juliasilge]

This is now ready for verification for Public Beta. For QA and confirming that we have the behavior as expected now, one will need to install the .vsix for the Quarto extension generated via GH Action artifact, like the one on this page (download the artifact, unzip, install in Positron via "Extensions: Install from VSIX..."). If you open a Quarto file with R chunks only (see below), you can now step through statements in chunks via Cmd+Enter.

• This only works for Cmd+Enter for Mac, and not Ctrl+Enter. If we do want to support that as well, we'll need to make another change to the Quarto extension similar to Allow Ctrl+Enter to also execute code #1209 here. I don't know how open they will be to this and I'm not sure how common this behavior is for Mac users.
• Only R Quarto files are going through Positron's statement range provider. Python Quarto files are going through the Jupyter executors from the Quarto extension still and the behavior is slightly different. That may be preferable for Python users but we can open a followup issue if folks have opinions. (This would involve changes to the Quarto VS Code extension, not Positron.)
• Quarto files with mixed R and Python chunks have some remaining issues but are mostly functional because they go through knitr and reticulate. The behavior could be improved but I do not think this is important for Public Beta.

[lionel-]

Now works great!

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