May I begin a separate thread for a line of discussion coming up under the dead camels? The discussion suggests we should also look at (1) what search.cpan.org comes up with in searching for modules; and (2) what links PAUSE builds when it extracts POD from an uploaded module. I'm going to present empirical observations only; it would be premature to make suggestions for changes until we heard from more contributors.
On Sunday 03 August 2003 17:45, Andy Lester wrote: > > Do a search on search.cpan.org for "HTTP::Response", a pretty common > > module. The first hit that comes up is the one from lcwa, and if > > you're not paying attention to the distro name (or you're a relative > > newbie who doesn't realize he needs to), you're going to be looking > > at 6-year-old docs for the module. Today, "Fergal Daly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> added: > Try Test::More, it's true home is Test::Simple but that's 5th on the list. Issue 1: What search.cpan.org comes up with when searching for a module. Tonight I searched for "Test::More" via each of search.cpan.org's 4 search modes. I was looking to see where MSCHWERN's Test::More appeared in each of the modes. Results: Searching via "All": 1st distro appearing is Test::More as part of Palm-Progect-2.0.1 by Michael Graham. Schwern's Test::More appears 4th on list. Note: In recent weeks 1st distro appearing under this search was Test::More as part of parrot-0.0.010 by Steve A Fink. Tonight, this distro is 2nd on list. Searching via "Modules": 1st distro appearing is Test::More as part of CPAN-1.76 by Andreas J Konig. Schwern's Test::More does not come up at all among 471 entries found. Searching via ""Distributions": Test::More does not come up at all Searching via "Authors": Schwern does not come up; 1st author listed is Huascar Tejeda (HUSOFT) -- who has no modules listed at all, so it's not clear why the search engine came up with him. Issue 2: Which links PAUSE builds when an author uploads a module whose POD contains links? This issue came up when I was studying Fergal's POD for his Test::Deep module (http://search.cpan.org/author/FDALY/Test-Deep-0.06/lib/Test/Deep.pod#SEE_AL SO). The POD appears simply as: L<Test::More> PAUSE links this to the version of Test::More described above as part of parrot-0.0.010 by Steve A Fink. I suspect that on the date this distro was uploaded, Steve's Test::More was still the 1st appearing when searching via "All" and that this may be why PAUSE linked to this version, when Fergal would probably have preferred the link be to Schwern's version. Do others observe similar phenomena? Is it problematic for you? Jim Keenan
