David Golden wrote:
John M. Gamble wrote:
CPAN, of course, is eternal, but putting the pdf in a module that is
only a tenth its size would be an undue burden on downloaders, not to
mention the lack of a clear policy on this.
How big is the PDF? If it could be optimized down to the 100K range
or less, I wouldn't really think twice about "undue burden".
It's 97K, which of course isn't bad as these things go (although as a
dial-up user at home, I tend to be more conscious of these things than
most people). Still, if it affects the size of a PPM, I'd be annoyed at
getting more than I asked for.
So. Is there, or could there be, a separate spot on CPAN for
supplemental documentation like PDF files and graphics files? Has
this ever been discussed before?
My immediate thought it to just bundle it in another distribution,
e.g. Math-Polynomial-Solve-Docs. Give that a regular distribution
skeleton with a Pod file that describes what it is and where it is in
the distribution. I think that if you create a "pdf/" directory and
put the file in there, it will get picked up as part of "other files"
by search.cpan.org. Then just reference
"Math::Polynomial::Solve::Docs" in your main Pod file.
If you want to get really fancy, you could also configure a CPAN
install tool to install the PDF in the perl library path for local
browsing. (See the Module::Build::Cookbook for some examples).
This is a good idea, with the caveat that I am just starting out with
Module::Build (the new upload of M-P-S will make use of it) and am a
little wobbly on the wheels yet.
-john
