Re: [MacPerl] installing libraries in mac perl

[Ronald J Kimball <rjk@linguist.dartmouth.edu>]

On Wed, Oct 20, 1999 at 04:21:10PM -0500, Matthew Langford wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, Ronald J Kimball wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Oct 20, 1999 at 09:18:01AM +0000, Bart Lateur wrote:
> > > If you don't provide a newbie-friendly introduction README, then you'll
> > > probably deter some people from even TRYING OUT MacPerl. They'll
> > > download it, take one look at these docs, and throw everything in the
> > > bin.
> > 
> > If someone can't handle a folder full of documentation, then they shouldn't
> > be using MacPerl or any other Perl.  I expect that's condescending too.  So
> > be it.
> 
> Congratulations, you have personified the Unix cultural approach to the
> new user experience.  While this means you are probably eminently
> qualified to handle programming questions, perlguts issues, and technical
> problems, you would likely have problems producing a user-friendly
> experience.  Why screw things up for people who do care about this aspect
> of MacPerl?
> 
> Just because you walked twenty miles to and from school in the snow,
> uphill both ways, doesn't mean everyone should, to toughen them up.
> Improvements (in _organizing_ and streamlining the documentation) don't
> endanger your status as an expert.
> 

Oh, come on.  This is a programming environment.  It's not a word processor
or a drawing program.  It doesn't even have fancy wizards, startup tips, or
tutorials.  Anyone who wants to use MacPerl *must* be able to cope with
documentation.  There is no way around that.

If, as Bart asserts, newbies will take a single look at the docs and toss
MacPerl immediately, then I see only two solutions:

1) Distribute MacPerl with almost no documentation whatsoever.
   (All the perl pod?  Nope, that's a folder full of documentation,
   can't scare the newbies.)

2) Accept that some people will not be able to handle MacPerl.

I prefer the latter solution.


Ronald

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