Re: minutes of ESC call ...

On 11/09/2012 09:29 AM, Alex Thurgood wrote:
> Le 08/11/2012 17:39, Michael Meeks a écrit :
> >         + should we drop Rhino, Beanshell & javascript in 4.0 ? (Michael)
> >                 + could be turned into an extension
> >                 + was in the past was turned off (Stephan)
> > AA:             + disable Rhino / Beanshell unless in experimental mode (Michael)
> >                 + for future deprecation / removal.
>
> Surely, shouldn't we be promoting access to UNO via a variety of
> scripting languages rather than removing the bits that others have
> managed to successfully integrate in the past ?
>
> Is there some issue with maintenance or known future compatibility
> headaches ? AFAIR some effort went into converting these from optional
> extensions into pre-compiled features, so why remove them (or make them
> hard to find) in 4.0 ?

The change from bundled extensions to truly integrated parts of the code 
was for technical reasons (the extensions directly accessed non-URE 
functionality, which does not work).

The idea to make them experimental-mode--only was to find out whether 
people actually use them (i.e., see whether there will be complaints 
that the functionality is gone, and then tell the complainers how to get 
the functionality after all).

From a maintenance perspective, there /is/ occasional trouble with 
those scripting providers, and also their integration is somewhat 
second-class, cf. their editor windows with a distinct Java l&f.  So I 
personally wouldn't mind if we drop them, if their user base is 
vanishingly small enough (which is always hard to tell).

Stephan