Re: Volunteering to maintain ob-asymptote.el within Org

[Jarmo Hurri]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com> writes:

> Jarmo Hurri <jarmo.hurri@iki.fi> writes:
>>> TBH, this is the first time I'm hearing about it.  I've looked it
>>> up, and indeed it seems to be useful.
>>
>> For some reason, even people who would certainly benefit from
>> Asymptote often have not heard of it. The developers do not really
>> advertise. Asymptote is amazingly powerful and sophisticated.
>
> Then, it would help to have more practical examples compared to what
> we have in
> https://www.orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/languages/ob-doc-asymptote.html

Absolutely. I have plenty of examples from the domains of math and
computer science.

>>> That said, shouldn't this be in org-contrib?  Too many features in a
>>> tool - featurism - may be distracting, in the sense that you focus
>>> more on your tool than work at hand.
>>
>> I do not understand this. Why would supporting a professional-level
>> graphics programming language be distracting someone from their work
>> when using Org?
>
> That a common minimalist argument. Some people dislike the fact that
> software includes features they do not personally use. Similar
> arguments are often raised regarding, for example, games shipped with
> Emacs.

I do not see Org as a "minimalist" system. I see it as glue.

I think one of the great powers of Org mode is its capability to act
together with various systems, including LaTeX and a host of programming
languages. I would never imagine that Org would only support the tools I
use, but I expect to be positively surprised by the fact that Org will
support, out of the box, something that I am not using now but will be
using in the future.

> I disagree in this particular case. Having ob-asymptote.el is not a
> featurism - I would not expect people to play around a full new
> programming language just because ob-language.el is in Org. The
> barrier of entry is too high to make it destructing.

I am not sure I can interpret your text correctly. But if you are saying
that builtin support for Asymptote will not lower the threshold of its
use among Org users, I would ask the following questions:
- How many Org users are already capable of programming?
- How many Org users prefer code-based representations to other forms?

All the best,

Jarmo