HI David, > > > ::Gist modules are simple, user-friendly and "don't make me think". > > I'm not sure it'll work, but trying can't do any harm :-) I would suggest, > however, calling it ...::Essentials instead of ...::Gist, as "gist" is a > rarely-used word that won't mean anything to the majority of people who > don't speak English natively - and even native speakers might not > understand exactly what a ::Gist module is meant to be and how it > differs from ::Simple. >
Good point. If one of the goals is to not make people think - then using a funky word may not help. On the other hand any good brand needs to be distinctive not descriptive ... and "Essentials" could be a little too descriptive ... hmm ... ideally I want it to mean 'extract the essential bit' ... something short and pithy that non-English speakers could easily understand ... tricky. I'm open to suggestions. > > Something else to consider is that it's often poor documentation that's > the problem, not complicated interfaces. Indeed. Template::Simple has a great interface - but unfortunately the documentation is a little long IMHO. > And the "poor" documentation > is often poor by dint of being ever-so-complete and ever-so-correct > without showing examples of common usage. Module authors are understandably keen to fully document their module - but this can work at odds to introducing new users to the problem and the module's solution. > So maybe contributing > HOWTO.pod files to distributions would be a way of achieving your aims. > I started work on CPAN::API::HOWTO a few months ago. > I'll take a look at this. I'm yet to fully sit down and try and take the 'gist' out of some modules - so it may be a lot harder to do than I think. Thanks for your comments. Nige
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