Re: org-ditaa woes

[Leo Butler]

Hello Florin,

On Thu, Oct 19 2023, Florin Boariu <florin.om@rootshell.ro> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> I am not on the mailing list, so I'm hoping that some kind soul with
> moderator powers will have mercy and let my email through in a timely
> manner :-) Also, please CC me in on the answer. (I'll happily
> subscribe if you feel that I should, but this is likely to be my only
> encounter with the Org-mode list, so it's probably bogus...)

You can read (and post to?) this email list on gmane.

> But in the source code of org-ditaa.el
> (https://github.com/tkf/org-mode/blob/master/lisp/ob-ditaa.el) I can
> see something like this on lines 87 ff:
>
>> [...]
>>        (cmd (concat "java " java " " org-ditaa-jar-option " "
>>                    (shell-quote-argument
>>                     (expand-file-name
>>                      (if eps org-ditaa-eps-jar-path org-ditaa-jar-path)))
>>                    " " cmdline
>>                    " " (org-babel-process-file-name in-file)
>>                    " " (org-babel-process-file-name out-file)))
>> [...]
>

I think you have identified a bug in ob-ditaa.el. Your request is
perfectly reasonable and that CMD should not have such hard-coded
constants in it, imo.

> I suck at LISP, but I'm guessing this means that there simply
> is no way of just passing on a "/usr/bin/ditaa" command-line to
> "org-ditaa", or at least an alternative Java command like "flatpak
> spawn --host /usr/bin/java ...". Org-ditaa really *does* insist of
> glueing it together from "java -jar ..." pieces, and is stubbornly
> adamant on finding Java in the same FS namespace.

Can you give us the command-line you would like to use?
That would help to fix the problem you are confronting.

>
> Is there a deeper reason behind this? This pretty much breaks
> Flatpak, or any other sandboxing compatibility, as far as I
> understand. Can it be changed? Please? :-)

The deeper reason is likely that ob-ditaa worked for whomever wrote it,
and users have either accepted its limitations (if noted), worked around
them, or gave up.

>
> How can I make it accept a command line?
>
> Is there any "generic" way of making org-babel accept a command line,
> not necessarily going through "org-ditaa", as a workaround?

You could use ob-shell, but it would be preferable to fix the bug you
have identified.

>
> Thanks & cheers,
> Florin.

Leo