Question about updating dependencies and project maintenance

[erseco]

Hi David,

First of all, thank you for creating and sharing mindmaps. I have been looking at the project recently and I really like how simple and useful it still is.

I noticed that some of the dependencies and frontend libraries are quite old now, including jQuery, jQuery UI, FileSaver.js, the build tooling, and some vendored JavaScript libraries.

Before spending time preparing changes, I wanted to ask whether you have any plans or interest in updating the dependencies and modernizing the project a bit.

If you are open to contributions, I would be happy to explore this gradually, trying to preserve the current behavior and avoid unnecessary changes.

I also understand from the README that the project is not actively maintained and is considered feature complete, so I completely understand if you prefer to keep it as it is.

Thanks again for making the project available.

[drichard]

Hi Ernesto,

It's nice to see you stumbled upon this project. To be honest, as long as the project still compiles even with the old ass dependencies I'd rather leave it as is (I actually haven't tested this to be honest).

For me personally, it's a bit of time capsule to a different era of web development when things were way simpler than they are now. If I started modernising the project now I probably wouldn't be able to stop and then it would just end up as a generic react/TS/vite mindmaps application but where is the fun in that.

There is something charming about just launching index.html without any build tools at all and things just work 🤷

Anyway, that's just my state of mind right now. I could probably be convinced to modernise the project a bit if it helps anyone but I'm not sure it's actually necessary.

[erseco]

Thanks for the explanation. I actually agree with your point about keeping the project simple. I would also much rather preserve the plain HTML/JavaScript approach than turn it into another React/Angular/anylastcreatedframework application with a large dependency tree.

For some additional context, I'm involved with the eXeLearning project, where the mindmaps editor is integrated and used as part of the application. That's the main reason I started looking at the dependencies.

Even though the current code still works, some of the older bundled libraries generate warnings in code and security scanning tools. In some environments we've also seen this kind of outdated dependency trigger antivirus or administrator security controls, which becomes problematic when distributing and installing the application.

So my intention wouldn't be a full rewrite or architectural modernization. I'd be much more interested in seeing whether the most problematic dependencies can be updated incrementally while preserving the nice property that the application is essentially just HTML and JavaScript and can work without introducing a heavy modern framework or build chain.

If you're open to that kind of approach, I can investigate what can reasonably be updated without changing the nature of the project and propose small, separate changes.

Thanks for you time :)