All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Kookee, and other Open Sourcerers

TorgoX on 2002-04-11T08:16:37

Dear Log,

I'm fiddling with getting LWP's HTTP::Cookies::Netscape to read Mozilla cookies files. I'm writing back and forth with the Mozilla developers about an apprently inadvertent change in the file format since NS4. It think it's a very good thing for people in different kinds of open source development to have at least some kind of contact with eachother, so we know what a great big wide world it is. (BTW, would anyone find a HTTP::Cookies::MSIE class useful?)

An idea I had recently: some of my Perl stuff is Perl-specific (like Pod::Spell or strict::ModuleName), but most of it could be easily translated to other languages. Something like HTML::TreeBuilder would be a major undertaking, since it's so massive and messy, but Lingua::EN::Numbers::Ordinate would be a snap to translate into any language; ditto MIDI-Perl, Time::Duration, or Text::Unidecode.

But I've gotten exactly zero mail about such translations, ever. If you know someone who writes Open Source software in some other language, and is looking for something to do, tell them they can start out by translating some of my stuff into their favorite non-Perl language.

Not sexy

mir on 2002-04-11T08:41:31

I think the reason there are not enough translations (ports actually) of modules into different languages is that it is really not a sexy job.

When an author sets out to write a module the creative part, the design, is really what they look forward to, often more than the final result. Porting a module from another language takes that part out of the process, and with it most of the fun.

How many translations of novels were done just for the fun?

BTW I once received an email from someone wanting to port XML::Twig to PHP. After I sent him back some elements about the design of the module I never heard from him again ;--(

Re:Not sexy

TorgoX on 2002-04-11T09:36:06

I think the reason there are not enough translations (ports actually) of modules into different languages is that it is really not a sexy job

True, but I think it'd be really good for someone who's not yet established in the field. Like maybe a CS student (college, high school, or maybe even earlier) looking for a little project. Good résumé fodder.

Re:Not sexy

pudge on 2002-04-16T12:36:55

I've gotten requests to port MP3::Info to other languages. I politely told them I had a life, and that the code was open source for a very good reason.

Re:Not sexy

TorgoX on 2002-04-16T15:59:47

I'd just say "I'd rather that someone who want to port it to Snobol (or whatever) be someone who's more fluent at Snobol than I am -- if you find someone, show them my Perl code, and if they have any questions, I can answer them!"