In the spirit of TMTOWTDI I have set up a new aggregator for Perl blogs, Perlsphere. Its aim is to operate a bit differently from Planet Perl...
- Openness - admission to Planet Perl is by selection of the site operators only. Perlsphere is open to any blog about Perl.
- Being a little easier on the eye - those jaggies on the Planet Perl camel scare me.
- Most importantly, running on Perl. Perlsphere runs on the remarkable Plagger. Planet Perl runs on Planet, a Python application... whose templating engine was a copy of Perl's own HTML::Template! Kind of embarrassing.
Please don't take this as a diss post for Planet Perl, though. I hope both sites can exist in a healthy state of competition.
If you'd like to be included, shoot me a line with your blog's feed URL. (Note: if your blog is multi-topic, I'd prefer just the feed for your Perl category/ies, thanks.)
Planet, Plagger, Perl
ChrisDolan on 2008-06-14T04:08:59
As a Perl developer, a Planet contributor, and a (novice) Plagger user, I feel somewhat qualified to compare the software behind that and Plagger. Planet is MUCH MUCH easier to use than Plagger. Internally, Planet has an radically different development style. Planet has no official releases -- it's all just the bzr trees. The Venus branch (for which Sam Ruby deserves a ton of credit!) of the Planet project was the first to add any real tests. But it changed some of the founding principals of aggregation (e.g. sort by discovery date, not original date).
That brief comparison aside, I don't understand why Perl people insist on Perl tools. I think that's an NIH attitude that is frequently unproductive. Unless you plan to do heavy hacking, you should use the easiest tool that accomplishes the job.
Finally, you contrast the "openness" of your feed vs. Planet Perl. In both cases, one should use email to request the addition of new feeds. I've sent emails to the Planet Perl maintainers and have found them to be responsive. How is Planet Perl any less open in that regard?
Competition is a fine thing, but I think that you did diss Planet Perl in your comparison, whether intentional or not. Indubitably, your implementation is prettier (but I reaggregate anyway so I'll never see that prettiness).
Re:Planet, Plagger, Perl
I think you're being too serious. I believe the choosing of Plagger of has more to do with image/marketing/advocacy (showing Perl-based tools) than technical reasons. As another example, I usually use Wordpress when creating blogs, as it's the easiest to install. But I might choose MT when creating a Perl-topic blog, just because it's written in Perl and showcase Perl applications.
Re:Planet, Plagger, Perl
ajt on 2008-06-15T12:52:10
While there is nothing wrong with using the right tool for the right job, which sometimes isn't your favourite tool, in this case a blog aggregator is something Perl should be good at and hence the Perl community in this case should eat it's own dog food an use a Perl aggregator...
Re:Planet, Plagger, Perl
miyagawa on 2008-06-14T09:41:53
> Planet is MUCH MUCH easier to use than Plagger
Of course! Because Planet is designed to do one thing while Plagger is not.
If you want the easienss of using Planet in Perl, Dave Cross' Perlanet is another option.
yay, long live TIMTOWTDI!
Yay, long live TIMTOWTDI! Adding this now to my RSS reader, thanks!
Perl aggregator to rule them all!
draegtun on 2008-06-14T15:06:06
Certainly like to...
i) See more even Perl blogs coming thru my RSS feeds &
ii) See lot less duplication of these blogs in my feeds!!
Perhaps a good reader would stop these dups (using Google Reader). However having a single RSS Perl feed which I can rely on for everything would be lovey jubbly to me!
/I3az/
Please add my use.perl.org journal
Shlomi Fish on 2008-06-16T14:42:31
Hi hex!
Please add my use.perl.org journal. It is kept Perl-only.
Thanks! -- Shlomi Fish.
Re:Please add my use.perl.org journal
hex on 2008-06-16T23:50:50
Done!
Re:Please add my use.perl.org journal
Shlomi Fish on 2008-06-17T06:44:56
Thanks!
Regards, -- Shlomi Fish
