Re: [MacPerl] OSA Extention for PERL

[Matthias Ulrich Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>]

pudge@pobox.com (Chris Nandor) writes:
>At 11.13 8/8/97, Strider wrote:
>>Awhile back, a MacPERL OSA extention was released. If it worked (which it
>>generally doesn't =) it would allow the Script Editor to edit PERL scripts
>>(yipee) and (if I understand correctly) allow PERL scripts to be accessed
>>as standalones like Applescript Standalones and droplets.

"Standalone" if you drop an 1.5M component into your system folder.

>You don't need a "plugin" for the Yellow Box, as UNIX perl runs natively
>there already.  I think what is needed -- Matthias, please tell me if I am
>wrong -- is better OSA support from Apple for language developers.

The limitations of the MacOS version of the OSA Perl plugin have little to do
with lack of support from Apple (except that I ran into some obscure corners of
the code fragment manager which seemed to be undocumented). I just lost
interest in the current OSA component when it became evident what sort of
memory consumption and startup time it had.

>>It would also be extremely advantageous for web site developers, because
>>the software would be loaded as part of the system- it would be even
>>faster, and require less RAM (at least, I think it probably would =)

The MacPerl application represents a negligible portion of the code size and
memory consumption.

>>One of the most major setbacks of macintosh-based perl is that scripts
>>can't just be distributed, like they can in UNIX.

As a commercial UNIX developer, I can assure you that many companies can *not*
"just distribute" perl scripts. Perl is *not* guaranteed to be available, and
an UN*X Perl installation is harder than a MacPerl installation.

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher   <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>   http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~neeri
   "No, what he didn't like about heroes was that they were usually
    suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk."
                          -- Terry Pratchett, _The Colour of Magic_

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