Hi, I tell you my story and if you find something silly or have a better idea please tell me.
I have 3 modules where I think Inline could be useful. Spreadsheet::Perl, PBS and Smed each module has it's own little story and use. I hope no one will get borred. Spreadsheet::Perl is on CPAN. It's a spreadsheet implementation in pure perl. I supports formulas written in perl and in a symbolic language offered by Steffen Müller (author of Math::Symbolic). It would be cool to offer other languages for the formulas and also have the possibility to write some stuff in C for speed. The formulas in symbolic language are translated to perl. PBS, not on CPAN, is an "advanced" build system (like cons and the like) that is rule based (like make) and that is programed with perl. Inline could be used to allow the rule files (which migh contain "build" functions) to be written in python or java (so they stop bothering with the ugly Ant syntax :-). I'll either have to find a way to do that through Inline or I might be able to have a client server architecture with the back end written in perl; that would force me to write the front end for each language i want to support (eeurkk) Smed, not on CPAN, is my text editor. This one is more difficult to describe. It's a C++ core with lexers written with Flex and manipulated through a perl script to make a lexer class (I let you guess which lexer was the most difficult to write). The editor embeds 3 script engines, Perl, Python, Basic so it it possible to write scripts in the three languages. The whole thing is kind of big and ugly but rather fun. I use it everyday at work so it's not so bad (if you are forgiving about the sudden crashes without explainations ;-) I re-wrote Smed in pure perl a few years ago when I started working seriously on Linux. it has a WxWindows front end but it's too slow so I use Scite ( :-( well it's rather good actualy but I prefer my own dog food). I could use Inline to script the editor in multiple languages but there is also need for speed up in the core that a compiled language could give. The lexers could also be written in Inline::Flex. I could make the core more modulable so "people" could change the core in whatever language they want (with perl doing the control) Those are my stories, I'd like to hear what you have to say about them or if you'd like to join one of them. I'm also very curious to hear about how _you_ use Inline. Cheers, Nadim
