Re: The fate of ditaa.jar (9.4.5.)

[Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>]

Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com> writes:

> If org-mode wants to support ditaa, it is a requirement to inform the user how to
> get the software and install it.  Moving into into a separate repository without
> appropriately telling the user introduces the problem that users will miss out
> on free software that they would otherwise have used.  Using org should not be made 
> more difficult than it already is. 
>   
Another problem I didn't mention in previous replay, is that user can
have wrong (outdated) version of Java installed on his/her machine which
might not be compatible with ditaa version org mode ships, which may
introduce further questions and problems. IMO I think it is better to
leave out 3rd party applications and let users install those on their
own. 

>> Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2021 at 8:49 AM
>> From: "Arthur Miller" <arthur.miller@live.com>
>> To: "Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide" <arne_bab@web.de>
>> Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
>> Subject: Re: The fate of ditaa.jar (9.4.5.)
>>
>> "Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide" <arne_bab@web.de> writes:
>> 
>> > Russell Adams <RLAdams@AdamsInfoServ.Com> writes:
>> >
>> >> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 02:28:57PM +0300, Jarmo Hurri wrote:
>> >>> I pulled the latest master and noticed that contrib has been moved into
>> >>> a separate repository. I also cloned this contrib repository, but can
>> >>> not find the file
>> >>>
>> >>> scripts/ditaa.jar
>> >>>
>> >>> in the repo. In fact, there is no directory scripts in the repo.
>> >>
>> >> I actually never considered this might be packaged with Org. I always
>> >> thought I had to install it separately, like my Latex distribution or
>> >> PlantUML.
>> >
>> > Bundling this makes ditaa code blocks just work. Otherwise they won’t
>> > work on every org-install.
>> 
>> The user still needs a Java runtime installed on his/her compute, so
>> bundling ditaa.jar gives no guarantee at all that ditaa blocks will just
>> work on every org-install.
>> 
>> Instead a less informaed user, not used to run java programs, might be
>> left with a not working application that fails silently or to the user
>> incomprehensible error message.
>> 
>> Better to point user to ditaa's sources/releases and inform it is
>> optional with org. That way non-informed user will have to install java
>> and ditaa and will at least have an idea where to look when things go wrong.
>> 
>>