I like Class::Phrasebook, but yesterday discovered a major flaw in my liking for it. It uses XML. Now in and of itself, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it needs expat to work. For my own stuff that's fine. However, on the distribution I was creating for work this became a stumbling block yesterday. Installing loads of new apps wasn't seen as a good thing, quite rightly too.
I've now rewritten a very basic C::P into a Phrasebook module that works on .ini files, via another favourite module Config::IniFiles. It works, but it doesn't have anywhere near the support for debugging, etc that C::P gives you. It crossed my mind whether it would be worth expanding the module to more or less support everything that C::P (debugging, whitespacing, etc) does and release to CPAN. I then had to wonder what to call it. Class::Phrasebook::Ini might make people think it relies on C::P, which it doesn't. But Config::IniFiles::Phrasebook might be an idea.
I should really get approval from the boss first, seeing as I wrote it for and at work, but I'm sure it won't be a problem. It's nice to think of a useful module for a change.
Thought for the month. Have you noticed more Games:: modules appearing? I'm guilty too, but it made me wonder is Games:: the new Acme::?
I also didn't like C::P, so I wrote Phrasebook which is vaguely more flexible and uses YAML by default.
It's not on CPAN because I can't think of a good name for it and I don't think it's good enough to deserve the Phrasebook namespace.
Its been serving well internally.
