Re: [MacPerl] Perl Usage Survey -> MacCPAN

[Matthew Langford <langfml [at] eng [dot] auburn [dot] edu>]

On Fri, 6 Nov 1998, Arved Sandstrom wrote:

> Jay makes some good points. I agree (which doesn't make me correct) that
> these rankings will not reflect user satisfaction. In point of fact, I
> suspect most Perl users just want to use *Perl*, irrespective of what
> platform it's on, and IMO the MacPerl user interface is by far the most
> user-friendly. UNIX is second-best in this regard, and even then you have
> to be quite comfortable with emacs (or the like) in order to develop with
> some ease.

I agree, except for CPAN.  I think CPAN is the most incredible way to
extend a programming environment I've ever seen:  I get to browse through
extensions to the language in realtime, written by people all over the
world.  Class libraries to do whatever I can conceive, pre-written, with
some annotations about production-readiness.  Now THAT's laziness,
impatience, and hubris.

I'd love to see a Mac version, complete with a Transit/Fetch/FTP look,
with an explanation pane.  Some sort of cool presentation of author's
name, package status, version numbers, and so on.  I'm just thinking out
loud here.  And it would download it, de-tarzip, and stick it in just the
right folder(s).  Is there any standard tool on the Mac to move the pieces
of a package to the right locations?  I guess this (just moving files) is
a reasonable subset of MakeMaker functionality.  We don't need to (or
can't easily) compile and dependence-test; a subset would work.

But would you point such a tool at the normal CPAN, or some other (Chris
Nandor's?) site?  Maybe allow for both, with some "may require porting"
indication for the normal CPAN.  Of course you can use a bunch of sites,
but MacCPAN has to know certain things about the directory structure to
find all the necessary pieces of information.  And the main CPAN structure
won't (shouldn't) change to please MacCPAN.

I'll bet many of the rest of you have thought about this, too.  Would the
list be willing to entertain such a discussion?  Is it doable?  Is it
being done?


> I don't take even vicarious pleasure in the fact that the UI for the
> Wintel version of Perl is so crappy - I have to work on this platform and
> developing Perl scripts on Win9* is agony. It's also in my own interests
> that Perl be as popular as possible on all platforms - it's currently my
> _power_ language, and my resume would be greatly improved if Perl on
> Windows was decent and hence more visible. In my geographical area the
> visibility of Perl is abysmal. I'm frequently left to wonder why if I
> could cite lots of experience with two of the most execrable pieces of
> junk on the planet - VisualBasic and Visual C++ - I'd be rolling in job
> offers, but expertise with probably the most useful language currently
> around doesn't count for more than a blank look. :-)

Exactly.  I couldn't agree more.


--
MattLangford 


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