Re: [MacPerl] We need more evangelism...

[David Turley <dturley@pobox.com>]

In message "Re: [MacPerl] We need more evangelism...", Chris Nandor and
Vicki Brown conversed:

>>it would never have occurred to me that Perl would have a reasonable chance
>>of building out of the box for an Amiga.  Or DOS.  Or Windows, or VMS. None
>>of which are Unix.

>Yes, this is a worthwhile goal; of course, Perl will never build out of the
>box completely from the Perl sources, because half of the MacPerl
>distribution is Mac-specific.

Two cents added by me:

Personally, what I like about Perl is the fact that I can write a script to
run some mundane task (like when someone gives me a PhotoCD with a few
hundred images, and says we need a few hundred web pages with these photos
added to our site tomorrow) and I can move that script and run it one
either on my desktop mac or my windoze laptap. Should I ever be so
fortunate as Paul S. to have a Linux box, well, the scripts will run there.
I have little use for the toolbox modules or even the Win specific tools,
(although the OLE module written up in the latest Perl Journal does have me
intriqued.)

I would love to see standard perl build out of the box for Mac, like it
does on windows. Perhaps, there could be an additional "make" to run that
would add in the Mac specifics. It is somewhat disheartening, given the
usual one-up that the Mac usually has over wintel, that it lags when it
comes to perl. That on my laptop, I can install (most) CPAN modules simply
by running 'dmake', the win version of make. The modules build just like
they do under *nix. Having to install MPW to run perl like it was meant to
run just doesn't do it for this user.

Now, before the evangelist dander flies to far, to the MacOS I say, "I am,
and always will be your friend." :-) But interoperabilily is the key. I
think Matthias has done a wonderful thing bringing perl to the mac,
personally, I don't think he gets the praise he deserves from most users
(the ones who don't read this list :-) But I don't want to see the mac left
out of standard perl, strictly for the sake of the "toolbox." This would
also, I believe, relieve some of the burden from Matthias.

Well, that's my ramble.

cheers,

david

_______________________________________________________________________
David Turley
dturley@pobox.com
http://www.pobox.com/~dturley

"As I have always held it a crime to anticipate evils I will believe
it a good comfortable road until I am compelled to believe differently."

--Meriwether Lewis, upon viewing the Rocky Mountains for the first time,
May 26, 1805
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