All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

As Oscar Wilde Said...

davorg on 2004-10-01T08:04:30

"The only thing worse than being talked about... is not being talked about."

I don't think I'll ever really understand the publishing industry. When pjf said that one of my books is far harder to get hold of than the other, I was sure that it would be DMP that would be the hardest to get. I think we're getting pretty close to selling out of the second printing now and I doubt there will be a third (buy now! while stocks last!!)

But no, it's the badger book that Paul is having trouble with. It's apparently seen as such a minority technology that the Australian distributor doesn't keep copies in stock - just getting them from O'Reilly as they are ordered.

I guess the solution is to get more of a buzz going around TT so it's seen as a cool and popular tool (outside of just the Perl community).

No more DMP?

2shortplanks on 2004-10-01T10:25:56

Say it ain't so! Damn, that book's on my non-domain specific recommended reading list every time a programmer asks what perl books to buy (which is incase anyone cares:)
  • Programming Perl (duh - it's the textbook)
  • Data Munging With Perl (good understanding of the day to day things that Perl is normally used for)
  • Object Oriented Perl (If you want a understanding of just what you can do with Perl)
  • Perl Medic (understand the common mistakes perl programmers make and how perl has evolved as a language and the implications of that)
Am I going to have to revise this list? Tell people to buy the pdf version (shudder.)

Re:No more DMP?

davorg on 2004-10-01T11:19:06

Well, I don't know for sure. I'm just guessing here.

I have a plan tho'.

Applicability

Matts on 2004-10-01T13:08:28

DMP is applicable to everyone who uses perl. TT is applicable to those who use perl and who use TT (instead of some other templating solution or no templating at all).

It makes sense to me.

Re:Applicability

davorg on 2004-10-01T13:21:01

I see that. But alternatively, DMP is applicable to anyone who uses Perl and the badger is applicable to anyone who uses templates (not necessarily just people who use Perl and templates).

The fact that we're not getting to that (potentially much larger) second group is probably because TT is seen as a Perl tool, rather than a tool that just happens to be written in Perl. TT has a pretty good press within the Perl community, but it seems to be almost unknown outside of it. I need to put my Linux Format "Intro to TT" articles online. The first two of those didn't use any Perl at all.

Re:Applicability

Matts on 2004-10-01T13:48:45

Yes, you're definitely missing that market, but I don't think that market really exists :-)

In order to do useful things with TT you have to be using perl for data structure generation, so the two are quite intimately tied together. It's not like XSLT where there are C implementations that can be embedded into other languages, unfortunately.

Availability of the badger

pjm on 2004-10-02T00:23:29

Just to add a positive data point, I saw the badger in Adelaide at the standard O'Reilly reseller (Dymocks, Rundle Mall, for what it's worth). No ordering required. So at least some copies were thrown to the usual suspects in Australia.

The other obvious candidate is (surprise...) Borders, and as far as I know the badger hasn't shown his face there since I snapped up the first copy on offer.