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Re: wxPerl past, wxPerl present and wxPerl future.
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From:
James Lynes
Date:
January 2, 2013 03:48
Subject:
Re: wxPerl past, wxPerl present and wxPerl future.
Message ID:
CABPysehP-XY836LZrgXyOQDu5doGxhC3mUb-DWsiEzx85qhmCQ@mail.gmail.com
Steve:
Thanks for the conversation starter.
As a new learner,for me, the state of the documentation is the major
issue. The wxWidgets document is massive and the perl references are
spotty. As a result, I bought the WxBook and converted the C++ examples to
wxPerl to help with my learning curve. I found the wxDemo format difficult
for an initial introduction. The "extra" code needed to integrate it all
together muddies the water for a beginner or at least for me.
A net search, lists many examples/tutorials, maybe an effort to pull
together a wxPerlBook might help long term.
James
On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 10:45 AM, Steve Cookson <steveco.1959@gmail.com>wrote:
> Hi Guys,
>
> I've been using wxPerl as my main development tool for the last 4 years.
>
> During that time my partners and I have developed a medical system for
> endoscopic examinations. We are currently testing it here in Brazil
> in the largest hospital in Central and South America. We have high
> hopes and Doctors here are quite enthusiastic about it.
>
> During this time WxPerl has been a great tool. Not only it is a
> comprehensive tool in its own right, but also it allows access to all
> the thousands of modules available on cpan, the various support forums
> like Perl Monks and the extensive Perl community out there like Perl
> Mongers and YAPC.
>
> But I don't see that the wxPerl community is expanding. I'd like to
> see more new users asking silly questions and learning about the
> possibilities of using wxPerl for their own ends.
>
> The world of technology is changing fast. New devices, new languages
> and new tool-kits are being developed such as Android, qt, java and
> objective-c, but none of these is obviously the "killer app" of
> development tools. Qt seems to be a nice tool, but it's probably not
> so different from wxPerl, objective-c is too platform-specific and
> java imposes too much of a performance overhead. As an aside did you
> know that VLC, the open-source video player, was originally built in
> wxWidgets? Sadly it then migrated to Qt.
>
> In the light of this competition wxWidgets is beginning to position
> itself as a desktop development system rather than a true
> cross-platform tool, which seems to me to be an act of retrenchment.
>
> Given all of this, I think wxPerl is still a good choice for a new
> system. I'd like to open a discussion here on how we might breath new
> life into wxPerl and our user base.
>
> I have some ideas and I'm sure you must do too. Given an opportunity
> people are quite excited about the idea of contributing to wxPerl:
> there was a lot of cooperative development over adding wxPdfDocument
> to wxPerl and it's a great new feature, you should try it if you
> haven't already.
>
> During the development of our system, my partners and I have had to
> use number of different technologies and support forums. Many of
> these are c++ based but still have ten times the subscription rate of
> wxPerl (which in my view is a much easier-to-use tool).
>
> As an example from my own area of interest, video processing,
> GStreamer has a huge number of users, this month alone Gstreamer-devel
> (
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/gstreamer-devel/2012-December/thread.html
> )
> one of Gstreamer's 8 eight support lists, has had nearly 500 messages
> compared to under 40 in wxPerl. If we could persuade a small number
> of these that developing in wxPerl was easier than c++, we could
> double our numbers. But the relevant module, wxMediaCtrl, is not
> flexible enough, we'd have to fix that first. Ffmpeg, a competitor to
> Gstreamer has a similar number of posts. And I haven't even
> considered Avconv, a new branch of Ffmpeg.
>
> And there are other technologies, within database technologies
> Firebird again has 10 times the users of wxPerl but until recently
> there was no good driver available on the Linux/Perl platform. And
> what about voice recognition?
>
> Remember how bioinformatics and the human genome project breathed new
> life into the Perl user base. A winning applications area can
> transform a technology.
>
> Mark has done a heroic act of maintaining the system and I personally
> owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Our system would not be where it is
> today without his support. But we should have two or three
> administrators of Mark's ability and knowledge (and patience, I should
> add). We are all a bit shy about giving Mark the credit he deserves.
> I'd like to say here and now, that Mark's professionalism and
> thoroughness is a benchmark that I should like to aspire to.
>
> Let's make 2013 the year that we double or treble our user base. What
> are your ideas?
>
> Happy New Year everyone.
>
> Regards
>
> Steve
>
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