What tool does Norvig use to create this json file? Does iPython have this as a feature (somehow allowing formatted
text)?
If so, yes, that's what a saved ipython notebook is. See: http://ipython.org/notebook.html for an overview of ipython notebooks.
You can export it to html, latex, etc using "ipython nbconvert --to <format_you_want>". See: http://ipython.org/ipython-doc/dev/interactive/notebook.html...
Basically, the website you're seeing (nbviewer) hosts ipython notebooks (json files) and converts them to static html for viewing.
Is there any nice bundle of everything you need for ipython, for the Mac, that's both easy to install and uninstall?
Seeing as how you already have a functioning install of ipython and a setup you're otherwise happy with, this is probably the easiest route.
Also, just so it's clear what's going on, ipython notebooks and (especially) format conversion are optional (but very useful) parts of ipython. They're not part of the core functionality, so `pandoc` isn't a strict requirement to build ipython.
Otherwise, as long as you don't mind switching the python interpreter, etc as well, look into Anaconda or Canopy. I'm not 100% sure if either comes with pandoc, but they're stand-alone scientific python distributions that make it a good bit easier to get ipython, numpy, matplotlib, etc set up.
But I've just recently installed all this, and have only kicked it around a little. Mostly, I wanted plotting.