Add config option to disable HTML repr

[cbrnr]

Fixes #9830.

Open questions:

1. I added four lines of code at the beginning of _repr_html_() of each class that defines this method. We could outsource this (in a decorator?), but it's probably overkill right now. I refactored this into a decorator, I think this is cleaner even for the few classes we have.
2. I didn't find a way to set a config option only temporarily (for the current session without writing to the config file) – is this possible somehow? set_config() doesn't seem to support it, but maybe I missed a context manager or something similar?

[agramfort]

could we test this so the new lines are covered? 🙏 @cbrnr

[cbrnr]

Sure, I'll add a test. Does anyone have an answer to my second question? Basically, I'm looking for something like mne.set_log_level(), which is only valid within the current session (so not permanently).

[agramfort]

looking at the doc and thinking where this information could be added I found

https://mne.tools/stable/auto_tutorials/intro/50_configure_mne.html

and this tells me that maybe using mne config mechanism would be the expect thing to do...

what do you think @cbrnr @drammock ?

[cbrnr]

I'm not sure I understand. Do you want to describe the new config option in the docs? We haven't done this for the other existing options though.

[agramfort]

what other options do you have in mind?

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[cbrnr]

If we haven't described our config options so far, I think we should describe all of them. But maybe @drammock knows if there's already some documentation.

[larsoner]

Does anyone have an answer to my second question? Basically, I'm looking for something like mne.set_log_level(), which is only valid within the current session (so not permanently).

The current way to get this behavior is just to set os.environ['...']. It will be temporary to that session

[larsoner]

... and I don't think there is a single place where we describe all options. Instead we try to describe each option around where it's used, e.g., the 3D options should be described in set_3d_options. For this new param since it's more "global" in scope like set_log_level, we could just add it to the config tutorial for now, and figure out in a separate issue if we want to add all options somewhere else later (I'm not yet convinced we should/need to so we should discuss separately).

[cbrnr]

The current way to get this behavior is just to set os.environ['...']. It will be temporary to that session

OK, that's what I did in the test.

Re describing config options, I'm fine with descriptions in different places, but maybe an overview of all possible values would be nice. Maybe even built into mne.get_config() somehow? Whatever we decide, I'd vote for tackling this in a separate PR, since this is a bit outside the scope of this PR.

[drammock]

I'm fine with descriptions in different places, but maybe an overview of all possible values would be nice. Maybe even built into mne.get_config() somehow?

mne.get_config("") returns a list of all valid config keys. (no explanation of what they do though, but fodder for a search engine or git grep).

[cbrnr]

mne.get_config("") returns a list of all valid config keys. (no explanation of what they do though, but fodder for a search engine or git grep).

That's probably good enough for now. WDYT @agramfort?

[drammock]

mne.get_config("") returns a list of all valid config keys. (no explanation of what they do though, but fodder for a search engine or git grep).

If we wanted a more thorough documentation of what they all do, a nice way to do it would be for mne.get_config("") to return a dict instead of a tuple, with the dict values being a short one-sentence description of what each key does and its valid values.

[cbrnr]

I could do that? In this PR?

[drammock]

I could do that? In this PR?

go for it. mne.get_config("") is mostly there for informational/interactive purposes, it's only used twice in the codebase in ways that should be compatible with dict too:

$ git grep "get_config('')"
mne/utils/tests/test_config.py:24:    assert (len(get_config('')) > 10)  # tuple of valid keys
tutorials/intro/50_configure_mne.py:84:assert 'MNEE_USE_CUUDAA' not in mne.get_config('')

[drammock]

oh, rereading, maybe you weren't volunteering :) and even if you were, it should probably be a separate PR.

[cbrnr]

That's OK, I'll do it in a separate PR. So I guess this one is ready?

[drammock]

LGTM, just one tiny suggestion. Thanks @cbrnr

[cbrnr]

All green – @agramfort please feel free to merge if all of your comments have been addressed!

[agramfort]

thanks @cbrnr

can you open issues for the next PRs to complete to follow up? 🙏