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Postings from June 2006
Sherm Pendley wrote: > On Jun 16, 2006, at 2:28 PM, Adam Kennedy wrote: > >> Perl has always sucked at desktop applications, mostly because we >> can't deliver applications in the same way we do regular things. > > I'm not sure who you're referring to with that "we", but CamelBones > users have been able to do precisely that on the Mac for a couple of > years now. Windows and Linux are still catching up - as usual. :-) I'm afraid CamelBones doesn't count. One of the biggest positives for Perl has always been that if I write some module, with a few caveats it will be platform agnostic. When it comes to programming languages, there is little point in having a desktop programming platform that only works on Macs, or only works on Windows, or only works on Linux. Even if CamelBones is a 100% solution on Mac, it's only a 7% solution on the desktop. And something that was Windows-specific doesn't help either, because it's still very difficult for people to promote something that doesn't work on all three major platforms. I put it to you that any contender for a "Desktop Perl" label needs to work on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. Anything that falls short of that is currently living in an ecological niche that is going to get bulldozed once it arrives. Notice that I've said NOTHING about individual programs. This isn't around the programs, or the look and feel of them. This is about having a set of modules that together can be used to write desktop application, and that are easy enough to install on all three platforms that you don't have to think about it. In the same way, Imager.pm has now reached a point where it installs properly on all platforms, and is growing as the dominant module for image manipulation. For the "Desktop Perl" Mattias has put an enormous amount of effort into Alien::wxWidgets, and is quite close to having it truly cross-platformable. I've added a few bits and pieces in terms of File::HomeDir and File::UserConfig, and with a few more bits and pieces in place, we may well be there. Adam K