A quick update on what's happening on the Perl 6 bootstrap list.
The original intention was for this list to discuss how to get the project rolling, but the main issue over the last few days has been the fact that many people are posting about Perl 6 itself (language design issues, etc) to the list. I think this is dying down now, and some good meta-discussion of how to actually run the Perl 6 project is starting to emerge.
Tim Bunce initiated a process to list problems with Perl 5 which people would like addressed. Ed Horos is collecting these whinges and will be collating them (with the help of yours truly) for publication back to to the Perl 6 development team.
Meanwhile, discussion has covered such topics as "How many mailing lists do we need", "Do we need a voting/opinion poll mechanism", "How will RFCs work?" and "What change management systems and processes should we use." The process of writing job descriptions for the main roles in the Perl 6 process has also begun, with Dan Sugalski posting his definition of the Internals Design position.
Another good thing is that some peoples' fears about Perl 6 being run in a closed or top-down approach, particularly in the area of PR, have been expressed and responded to. It is very clear that Perl 6 will be a community effort, and nobody's going to be able to dictate the One Perl Way against the will of the masses. There seems to be a high degree of confidence that the working groups' decisions will reflect the wishes of as many interested parties as possible, and that at the highest level, Larry won't let anything bad happen to Perl.
If you're thinking of joining the bootstrap list, PLEASE don't post your ideas on the features for Perl 6, as that is OFF TOPIC for the bootstrap list. You may find it useful to read the archives at
http://www.mail-archive.com/bootstrap@perl.org to get some idea of what's gone before.
Email addresses would be nice
tilly on 2000-08-02T12:40:41
If this site is meant to be a resource for the general community (I suspect it is) then it would probably be good to have contact email addresses in these articles. I can just go to the mailing lists if I want to, but users shouldn't need to do that.
Cheers,
Ben
Re:Email addresses would be nice
pudge on 2000-08-02T13:57:43
Contact email addresses for whom?
People mentioned in articles
tilly on 2000-08-02T17:48:40
For instance if your post says Ed Horos is collecting comments, it would be nice to either give an email address for Ed Horos, or to say that he will read this forum.
If you mean to only give a managable status report for internal developers, that is one thing. But if you mean to develop a site to be a resource for the general community (which it could easily do), that is quite another.
Cheers,
Ben
Re:People mentioned in articles
pudge on 2000-08-02T18:57:16
Hm. Well, Skud noted she would be collecting along with Ed, and I imagine since she posted, she would be reading, too. Other than that, if you want to be more involved, you should join the lists. I understand what you're saying; it probably would have been good to just link to the mail where Ed said he would be collecting comments, so you could go there to find out more.
I don't want to join the lists :-)
tilly on 2000-08-03T05:36:54
I saw the volume on bootstrap, and I don't have time.
For soliciting a large volume of changes this format works better for me.
Cheers,
Ben
PS I did privately send skud some suggestions. IIRC the suggesstions were to change split() to match people's expectations (that is the most commonly reported "bug"), have single-quoted strings be literally what you wrote (currently \\ is \ and \' embeds a '), an extension to the RE engine to cause it to perform (potentially slow) checks for poorly written REs (find how many ways there are of matching the pattern to the string - if there are too many print a warning), and possibly another couple things.
Re:I don't want to join the lists :-)
pudge on 2000-08-03T11:56:02
have single-quoted strings be literally what you wrote (currently \\ is \ and \' embeds a ')
I don't get this. So single-quoted strings may never have embedded single quotes?
No
tilly on 2000-08-03T12:02:44
If you want that then q/'/ works perfectly fine for having a single-quoted construct that embeds a single quote.
It seems to me to be worse to drop \\\\ into a Perl string right now. (Something that strings which are about to be interpolated by several other programs frequently must do.) Also there is a principle of least surprise. I far prefer explaining "single-quoted strings appear literally" than I do explaining "well they are sometimes literal and sometimes not."
This is a personal annoyance though, I still remember finding out what \' did in a single-quoted string the hard way. (Trying to build up a DOS filename.)
Cheers,
Ben
Re:No
pudge on 2000-08-04T16:50:44
So, when I asked
So single-quoted strings may never have embedded single quotes?, the answer is yes? That seems a lot more confusing than the alternative, to me.
