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Postings from June 2006
Sherm Pendley wrote: > On Jun 16, 2006, at 4:39 PM, Johan Vromans wrote: > >> Sherm Pendley <sherm@dot-app.org> writes: >> >>> 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. :-) > > Well, first of all, please keep the smiley in mind - I was objecting > (and not very strongly) to the "always" and "we can't" parts of Adam's > message. The level of suckage varies, and some of us *can* produce nice > GUI apps, albeit for a single platform. > >> It's all in the environment. Adam mentions App::GUI::Notepad but this >> depends on perlWx, which is usually not present and far from easy to >> install. Other applications need databases. > > CamelBones solves both of those issues. For the end user, installing a > CB app (which can include any number of CPAN modules, including DBD::*) > is a matter of drag-and-drop. No installer, no external dependencies, no > muss, no fuss. > >> If the 'standard environment' would always provide a decent GUI and >> database it would be much easier to create out-of-the-box >> applications. Unfortunately, in the perl world, this is not yet the >> case. > > I have yet to see the language for which that *is* the case. Frankly, I > don't think I ever will - I think "one size fits all" is a pipe dream > when it comes to GUI kits. I've seen lots of attempts, most of which are > successful to varying degrees at providing a consistent cross-platform > programming API. But every last one falls flat when it comes to adopting > the "native" UI standards when running on each target platform - Java, > I'm looking at you now. But Perl does not even achieve that level of functionality. The success or otherwise with which an individual application can look like the local platform is almost irrelevant if you can't make a cross platform API work at all. Adam K