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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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Vanilla and Strawberry (and Chocolate) Perl 2008 Plans 8 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • But they will be based on WxWindows, and will most likely include things like a POD Viewer, a GUI CPAN Client, and potentially an editor such as Kephra, as well as other tools as needed or available.

    Um...why ? or rather, why not the GUI toolkit that is/has supplanted all others, namely, the web browser ? Its 2008. As of about mid-2006, its become increasingly clear that, "if it doesn't run in a browser, it don't mean sh*t."

    At the risk of sounding like a buzzword bingo caller, it would be a shame to see your efforts expended on what is increasingly becoming dead technology. Sure, the browser may lack some of the more intricate features of GUIs, but (esp. for Windows development), that gap is shrinking rapidly. Ext 2.0 and Dojo 1.0 have both been released, and TIBCO GI is more mature than either of those. Adobe AIR is GA now, so the distinction between browser and desktop app has nearly evaporated.

    Admittedly, that may mean more Javascript than Perl, but if you're willing to jump on the IWL [cpan.org] bandwagon, much of the Javascript can be "proxied" out thru Perl.

    Having expended a lot of energy on Perl/Tk in the past few years, I've learned the hard way that GUI toolkits are on the way out (unless you're building a web browser). I got annoyed the first few times I heard my beta testers say, "Hey thats pretty cool...can I run it in my browser ?". After a dozen times or so, I realized the problem was between my ears, not theirs.

    wx may look kewl (ignoring the doc issues), but I fear that may be a similar glidepath to obsolescence. And a full featured RIA toolkit for Perl would be a big PR win to boot.
    • The big win for browsers has always been automated deployment.

      If you want to run everything locally, there's still advantages to doing things in a GUI. Introducing a client server model and the overheads of doing things in Javascript for a process that is inherently local has it's own downsides.

      That said, it may well be that some of the client side apps ARE done in HTML/Javascript.

      The POD viewer is one example of an application that would be ideal to do browser-based. It's document focus aligns well with th

      • I don't understand implementing a "programmer's editor". There are plenty of IDEs for Perl [perl.org] already, aren't there?

        It's a good idea to make things work better on Windows, though. Languages like Python or Ruby seem to have already dealt with this better than Perl has.

        But what kind of motivation would a Windows programmer have to use Chocolate Perl instead of, say, Visual Studio [microsoft.com]?

        • ActiveState cancelled the Visual Studio Perl version of Perl.
          • I guess this is what I mean. Why would people from the Windows world even want to use Perl, when they can use for example C# or VB? Or maybe you're not trying to win over those people.
            • The best example that I can think of is in teaching -- I met someone who was taking a Perl course, and they were using Mac's TextEdit as their editor. I tried convincing the student they'd be better off at the very least using something that did text coloring (I recommended TextWrangler, being that they were a Mac user), but they didn't make the switch.

              I'd assume that making it easier for a non-programmer to pick up and program in Perl is a good thing, especially if it results in schools being more willing
            • Why would anyone on 90% of the world's desktops want to use Perl?

              Because they are forced to use Windows by corporate policy.

              Because of the CPAN... because there's so much depth to the pre-written code out there, and assembling components in Perl is SO much easier compared to Windows languages once you need to do anything even remotely esoteric or interesting.

              Because Windows + Mac + Linux == cross-platform, which is a hugely desirable feature.

              Because developers can write GUI business tools on Linux (which th
        • I'll add one more point to your original question.

          > I don't understand implementing a "programmer's editor". There are plenty of IDEs for Perl already, aren't there?

          Yes, but they all suck.
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