Re: [MacPerl] weak FAQ link

[Xah Lee <xah@best.com>]

At 07:03 AM -0700 1998.04.21, George Michel wrote:
>As a MacPerl user and fan I was pleased to see that the latest release
>appeared on MacCentral.  I was surprised that the info link sent me to a
>FAQ that was last updated in July of '96.  Wouldn't the MacPerl Pages or
>the MacPerl Homepage would be better?  At this point, I think with Power
>and Ease an outdated FAQ is not worth citing until it is updated. 

Yes, I bitched about this before. In MacSripting community, MacPerl is very quite and neglected. AppleScript and Frontier take over the show, in that order. AppleScript, because it comes with every Mac. Frontier because it's author is actively trumpeting it, together with its Windows version.

I've been in the scripting community since 3 years, but not until last year I got into MacPerl. This is primarily due to: (1) People in Applescript isn't very aware and familiar with Unix/Perl, and consequently few people learn it and less talk about it. (2) People in Frontier community think they are gods. Like the AppleScript camp, they are also primarily Mac users and don't know Unix much. Few know Perl and most see no NEED. (3) The presence of MacPerl on the web SUCKS. When I was looking around MacPerl, all the related documents (FAQs, Links) are outdated by a year or so. (and probably still are, as George Michel mentioned. At the time, the PrimeTime site just started) I think a partial reason for this is that people who knew Perl/MacPerl don't care much about AppleScript or Frontier. Since there are tons of Perl related information on the web, they neglected to provide enough info to welcome scripters who don't have a Unix background. (and btw, Unix folks in general have !
a sense of granduer. Very few realize it's a system that's severely brain-damaged. (^_^) )

In the MacScripting mailing list, there's rarely mention of MacPerl. (mostly AppleScript, then Frontier) For Frontier, Dave Winer has set up a handful of mailing lists for himself, and in these mailing lists they discuss Frontier and AppleScript.

Again, sorry I don't have the time (and knowlegable enough) to write an updated FAQ myself. In any event, Mathew or someone in charge (or of self-interest) should actively go out and remove outdated FAQ and links. These things really drive off potential users.

Another thing is that the MacPerl distribution assumes the user has a background in Unix too, thus almost none info is provided for intelligent (Macintosh) users who are interested in getting to know Perl. Speaking for myself, when I first downloaded MacPerl, I'm quite turned off by lack of tutorials, introductions, and **MacPerl** documentations. e.g. There isn't explaination on what Shuck/POD are, or "how to run your first script", or "What is Perl?", or even full documentation on the MacPerl menus/settings... etc. The situation is very unwholesome. (but again, Perl position itself as more or less a scripting language for programers, as opposed to AppleScript. And, Perl has quite different utilities compared to AppleScript/Frontier. But still, it's good to have complete documentations that also welcome beginners...)

 Xah xah@best.com
 http://www.best.com/~xah/PageTwo_dir/
 "Suck: Unix; Sucker: C; Suckest: Perl".



***** Want to unsubscribe from this list?
***** Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch