Thank you for your notice. BTW, I finally think that Notebook is not suitable for version control, but should use wl and other script/package/source code related formats.

Thank you for your confirmation. I've informed the author about the bug of SaveReadableNotebook discussed here by using the link "Send a message about this function".

Thank you for your advice. BTW, it seems that the result of the SaveReadableNotebook function is more beautiful and readable than the result generated by your code snippet.

Thank you for explanation. I've confirmed that for the latest version of Mathematica, the only feasible way is to use your improved version of CleanNotebookForGit.

I meet a very strange problem. Even with the ResourceFunction["SaveReadableNotebook"], the generated notebook still has syntax error as shown below:

I attached all related notebooks, please check.

Attachments:

SaveReadableNotebook.nb

readable.nb

Based on this discussion, I noticed another similar project called mathematica-notebook-filter, which also aims to solve the problems discussed here.

But this project is developed with rust and hasn't been updated for several years. So I think the method discussed here should be preferred. Basically, I suggest ResourceFunction["SaveReadableNotebook"] based workflow as described below:

1. Implement the related operation in script with the notebook want to be manipulated as an argument.
2. Use a temporary file to store the result of the above script, and finally rename/move it to the original notebook file. In this way, only one notebook is used.
3. Integrate the above workflow with the git pre-commit hook, as described here, here, and here.

Yes. This does the trick. But the diff gives the following results for continuous evaluation of the same NB file:

$ diff readable.nb readable1.nb 
50c50
<       CellLabel -> "In[18]:="
---
>       CellLabel -> "In[16]:="
55c55
<       CellLabel -> "Out[18]="
---
>       CellLabel -> "Out[16]="
84c84
<       CellLabel -> "In[19]:="
---
>       CellLabel -> "In[17]:="
89c89
<       CellLabel -> "Out[17]="
---
>       CellLabel -> "Out[15]="

As you can see, the In/Out cell numbering has been growing. This information is not conducive to git version control. It would be better if the numbers of these cells don't be tracked in the result file.

Attachments:

SaveReadableNotebook.nb

Thank you very much for telling me this function. The biggest problem is that the first execution of this function is time-consuming because of the network query. But downloading the notebook and deploying it locally on the computer can solve this problem, as shown below:

I tried some example codes shown in the document of **ResourceFunction["SaveReadableNotebook"]**, but encountered the following error:

FilePrint::badfile: The specified argument, FunctionRepository`$31760fa6b86145928a98537accf1a6b8`SaveReadableNotebook[nb,FileNameJoin[{/home/werner,readable.nb}]], should be a valid string or File.

See the attachment for more detailed information.

Attachments:

SaveReadableNotebook.nb

Hi Alexey Popkov,

This works. Some additional considerations:

1. How can I script the above code snippet instead of running it from inside Mathematica?
2. Why not make it a customized package, to facilitate loading and using it?
3. Some advice about the default arguments: Set the inputFile's default value to the notebook name where this function is called, and set outputFile's default value to something meaningful ending with git or like.

Here is an improved version of CleanNotebookForGit with a fix for above-described Pattern export bug. Another improvement is that it doesn't clean up options inside of BoxData, where this can cause problems:

CleanNotebookForGit[inputFile_, outputFile_] := 
  Module[{contents = Get[inputFile], newcontents,
    uniqCellHeadName = "$$$MyUniqueCellHead$$$" <> ToString[RandomInteger[{10^8, 10^10}]],
    uniqPatternHeadName = 
     "$$$MyUniquePatternHead$$$" <> ToString[RandomInteger[{10^8, 10^10}]]},
   newcontents = contents /. {bd_BoxData :> bd,
      HoldPattern[
        CellLabel | CellChangeTimes | ExpressionUUID | WindowSize | WindowMargins -> _] :>
        Sequence[]};
   Export[outputFile,
    StringReplace[
     ExportString[
      newcontents /. {Cell -> Symbol[uniqCellHeadName], 
        Pattern -> Symbol[uniqPatternHeadName]},
      "Package", PageWidth -> Infinity, "Comments" -> None],
     {uniqCellHeadName -> "\nCell", uniqPatternHeadName -> "Pattern"}], "Text"]];

Something was changed in the exporter to the "Package" format since developing the original implementation. With Mathematica 8.0.4 it still works correctly, but not with the latest versions. I'll inverstigate and try to fix it this week.

I want to execute the code snippet in the original nb file and write the processing results back to the same file. Is that possible?

Here is an improved version of the original code snippet which should fit your purposes much better:

CleanNotebookForGit[inputFile_, outputFile_] := 
  Module[{contents = Get[inputFile], newcontents, 
    uniqName = "$$$MyUniqueCellHead$$$" <> ToString[RandomInteger[{10^8, 10^10}]]},
   newcontents = 
    contents /. {HoldPattern[
        CellLabel | CellChangeTimes | ExpressionUUID | WindowSize | WindowMargins -> _] :>
        Sequence[]};
   Export[outputFile, 
    StringReplace[
     ExportString[newcontents /. Cell -> Symbol[uniqName], "Package", 
      PageWidth -> Infinity, "Comments" -> None], uniqName -> "\nCell"], "Text"]
   ];

An example of use:

CleanNotebookForGit["ExampleData/document.nb", "document (for Git).nb"] // SystemOpen

@Alexey Popkov

Thank you for your wonderful comments and sharing your valuable experience. But your method seems quite complicated. I need to learn it. If there is any problem, I will give follow-up feedback.

If you want version control use packages or save notebooks as .m / .wl and version control them.

But this doesn't have the capability of tracking image or other multimedia related content.