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pont-us / PuffinPlot

A program to plot and analyse palaeomagnetic data
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Make Jython optional and add Javascript support #317

Closed pont-us closed 4 years ago

pont-us commented 4 years ago

The Jython library bundled in PuffinPlot is a 8.3 MB stripped-down version lacking most of the standard library. It's a poor compromise: big enough to double the download size (once it's been doubled up by the necessity of including a separate jar for OS X), but too restricted to be really useful. There is another option for scripting: Java's built-in Javascript engine, nashorn. The following should be done:

  1. Implement support for Javascript scripting within PuffinPlot, providing the same interfaces currently in place for Jython (i.e. run from GUI and as command-line argument -- integrating PuffinPlot from within an external script should already be possible using jjs).

  2. Make Jython into an optional extra: retain the "run Python script" action, but do not bundle Jython. Instead, implement functionality within PuffinPlot to download the Jython jar if necessary, and load it dynamically at run-time.

Dropping Jython altogether would be a bad idea: Python is far more popular than Javascript for scientific programming. However, keeping Javascript for built-in scripting makes sense since the cost (in terms of development effort and download size) is minimal. Even if nobody else uses it, it's a handy way for me to send users experimental features and workarounds for bugs without doing a new release or having them download Jython.

pont-us commented 4 years ago 
Bugs Everywhere data:
Created at: 2016-10-07 07:38:44
Status: fixed
Severity: minor
UUID: 0dfc5e78-620d-4e23-820f-ad062997fce2
Short name: a88/0df