In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> In the interest of stopping what looks to be a potential flame war: I don't think there's any flamewar brewing. Perhaps I was a bit too curt -- it was a long week -- but I just wanted to emphasize that MacPerl is a first-class Perl implementation on a viable platform. In fact, it is easier, IMO, to build perl 5.6.1[*] on Mac OS than it is on Mac OS X. :-) MacPerl is not dead yet, and neither is Mac OS. For those who prefer Mac OS X, that's great, but I don't want anyone who might want to use Mac OS and MacPerl to think that MacPerl is not still going to be around or that it is merely a "stopgap". If you want to use it, it will be here, and it will work well, and don't let anyone tell you anything different. That's my message. :-) [ObPlug: MacPerl 5.6.1b3 is out, and b4 is going to be ready within a week or three, as hopefully the final beta before the release.] > As a long-time Unix (Solaris) SysAdmin and a Macintosh Bigot, I developed > apps in both the *nix Perl and MacPerl. I really liked many of the > capabilities of MacPerl (the open box, the droplets, the syntax checking > from the editor) I also missed the fact that the Perl 5 capabilites were > missing and that modules that required C compiles were not easy to > implement. I don't know what you mean by "the Perl 5 capabilities were missing." Maybe you were using MacPerl 4.x? MacPerl 5 has been out for many years now. But yes, XS modules have always been difficult, though the most popular ones have been readily available for a few years now, as has a tutorial on how to build them yourself using freely available tools. Still, a high bar for most people, but that can't be helped. :) > I have long wished that the best of both worlds were available, > and I hope that someone or some group can make it happen. We should have an > "plain vanilla" perl implementation for the command line, and we should have > extensions that would include an IDE and the ability to make simple > clickable apps and droplets. Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems like you are suggesting that an IDE and the ability to make droplets etc. are somehow different from a '"plain vanilla" perl implementation.' I don't know what that means. An IDE and droplet can simply communicate with the "command line" perl. They don't need to be separate things. [*] Well, the latest maint-5.6 source from the perl repository, which is more like perl 5.6.1 + patches. -- Chris Nandor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pudge.net/ Open Source Development Network [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://osdn.com/
