Re: The fate of ob-asymptote.el

[Jarmo Hurri <jarmo.hurri@iki.fi>]

Greetings Ihor.

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com> writes:

> Jarmo Hurri <jarmo.hurri@iki.fi> writes:
>
>>> Then, would it make more sense to include ob-asymptote.el into the
>>> asymptote distribution?
>>
>> I do not think this is a good idea:
>>
>> - I am not involved in the development of asymptote, so this solution
>>   would put maintenance of ob-asymptote.el beyond my reach.
>
> AFAIK, it is developed publicly. Anyone can open a pull request or
> post on their forum.

It might be possible, but certainly not as straightforward as working
with Org.

> The advantage of maintaining ob-asymptote.el in the main asymptote
> repo is that people who are intimately familiar with the asymptote
> features can directly contribute and enhance the Org
> integration. Moreover, distributing together with the asymptote means
> no headache with back-compatibility issues.
>
> Maintaining on Org side will have an advantage of using the latest
> additions to Org babel features.
>
> I feel like it is more important to make use of the asymptote features
> if its devs are going to be interested. Of course, IMHO.

I have a very bad feeling about tying ob-asymptote.el with Asymptote,
and I am trying to put my finger on this feeling. I think the problem is
this one.

ob-asymptote.el is coupled very loosely with Asymptote. Basically the
only thing ob-asymptote.el requires from Asymptote is the ability to
call the executable with some established parameters.

Then again, ob-asymptote.el is coupled much more tightly with Org. It
uses many more properties of Org (Babel) than of the Asymptote
program.

As a result, changes in Org are much more likely to affect
ob-asymptote.el than changes in Asymptote. I think basic software
development rules of thumb suggest that ob-asymptote.el should then be
bundled with Org.

All the best,

Jarmo