Jarmo Hurri <jarmo.hu...@iki.fi> writes: >> 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.
>From my point of view ob-asymptote.el is as bare bones as babel library can be. It does not use any fancy Org babel features like sessions, error display of converting the output to various :results output options. In contrast, it does a lot of work trying to convert Elisp types to Asymptote in `org-babel-asymptote-var-to-asymptote`. Of course, my view is a subject of discussion. Or maybe you have plans to implement advanced Org babel features for Asymptote. IDK. >From my point of view, any kind of new functionality in ob-asymptote.el requires a deep knowledge about the Asymptote programming - the knowledge most of the Org devs lack. At the same time, changes in Org babel core functionality are unlikely to cause any issues in ob-asymptote - we try our best to keep backwards compatibility with third-party babel packages anyway. Best, Ihor
