Thanks Apple! You snubbed perl yet again!
Some yummy facts about Leopard: Scripting Bridge Use Objective-C, Ruby, and Python programs to automate Mac applications. The new Scripting Bridge enables them to easily generate AppleEvents using a concise, AppleScript-like syntax. Ruby on Rails Work in a developer's dreamland. Leopard is the perfect platform for Ruby on Rails development, with Rails, Mongrel, and Capistrano built in. Not a single word about perl. No mention of CamelBones, using the Scripting Bridge for perl, or the fact that perl has CPAN with 12,000 + high quality modules while ruby has 4,000+ on rubyforge. Apple trumpets its POSIX conformation yet what UNIX is worth its weight in cat5 cable if it doesn't come with perl? It looks like I will have to stick with debian for developing my LAMP applications. Jeremiah
Re: Thanks Apple! You snubbed perl yet again!
In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Scripting Bridge Use Objective-C, Ruby, and Python programs to automate Mac applications. The new Scripting Bridge enables them to easily generate AppleEvents using a concise, AppleScript-like syntax. Mac OS X comes with Mac::Carbon, I thought. IS the issue that you won't have the right things available to you on the other side when you distribute applications? Apple trumpets its POSIX conformation yet what UNIX is worth its weight in cat5 cable if it doesn't come with perl? Mac OS X comes with Perl. Perhaps you meant to say CamelBones, but I don't think POSIX cares about that. It looks like I will have to stick with debian for developing my LAMP applications. If you want to work on the Mac, you still can. It doesn't sound like you want to though.
Re: Thanks Apple! You snubbed perl yet again!
On Oct 17, 2007, at 5:25 PM, brian d foy wrote: In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Scripting Bridge Use Objective-C, Ruby, and Python programs to automate Mac applications. The new Scripting Bridge enables them to easily generate AppleEvents using a concise, AppleScript-like syntax. Mac OS X comes with Mac::Carbon, I thought. IS the issue that you won't have the right things available to you on the other side when you distribute applications? Yes, it does come with Mac::Carbon, and yes there is CamelBones. I just think that Apple seems to ignore mentioning perl in their fancy marketing campaigns. I get frustrated by that since there is a misunderstanding about perl in the marketplace and companies like Apple are in a position to do something about it. Apple trumpets its POSIX conformation yet what UNIX is worth its weight in cat5 cable if it doesn't come with perl? Mac OS X comes with Perl. Perhaps you meant to say CamelBones, but I don't think POSIX cares about that. It looks like I will have to stick with debian for developing my LAMP applications. If you want to work on the Mac, you still can. It doesn't sound like you want to though. It may sound like that to you, but if I didn't want to develop (in perl) on the Mac, why would I bother writing about this at all? I just had hoped for more publicity for perl from Leopard. I had also hoped for a new version of perl and Apache 2.0 out of the box. Okay, getting 5.10 into Leopard isn't realistic and maybe Apache will be updated for Leopard, and yes, a stable platform is a worthy goal for users (I am beginning to convince myself I am wrong) but I think that Apple could have provided more for developers in regard to perl. Jeremiah
Re: Thanks Apple! You snubbed perl yet again!
On 10/17/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Some yummy facts about Leopard: Scripting Bridge Use Objective-C, Ruby, and Python programs to automate Mac applications. The new Scripting Bridge[...] Not a single word about perl. No mention of CamelBones I thought it was a well known fact that Apple got started on the Perl bridge work (ala Camelbones) late, and it would be a stretch if all the work would be completed in time for the Leopard release. At-least I recall reading that several places. Disappointing, yes, but it's not anything they couldn't finish and release via a .x update. Hopefully they will!
Re: Thanks Apple! You snubbed perl yet again!
In a message dated Wed, 17 Oct 2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yes, it does come with Mac::Carbon, and yes there is CamelBones. I just think that Apple seems to ignore mentioning perl in their fancy marketing campaigns. I get frustrated by that since there is a misunderstanding about perl in the marketplace and companies like Apple are in a position to do something about it. Perhaps someone with the inside scoop can give some real beef (though I understand that that sort of inside baseball is something Apple strongly discourages). But I suspect it's just a case of marketing types taking a temperature on what's hot and making sure the hot things were mentioned repeatedly. Look at the other items on http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html and it certainly looks that way. Ruby is hot, Perl is not. (Why Python made the cut and not Perl, I'm not sure; I don't think Python's particularly hot anymore. But I don't pretend to understand marketing types.) One shouldn't read engineering decisions into marketing copy--if you've ever had to make purchasing decisions on behalf of a large company, you learn that quickly. [snip] I just had hoped for more publicity for perl from Leopard. I had also hoped for a new version of perl and Apache 2.0 out of the box. Okay, getting 5.10 into Leopard isn't realistic [] No, it's not, as Leopard must be well past freeze at this point, and Red Hat disastrously demonstrated several years ago what happens when you ship a pre-release of an important open source tool with a new operating system release. Better to have old technology than bleeding-edge still subject to change, when it means that you'll be frozen for years on an alpha or beta version no one in the community is using. This does bring up something I don't think we've dealt with on this list in quite a few years though (when was it that OS X last came with Perl 5.6? Was it Jaguar? I can't recall)--for some period, probably well over a year at least, we'll be dealing with an OS X that does not have the most recent major release of Perl. Time to start working on the FAQ about how to install 5.10 alongside Apple's 5.8, since how do I get 5.10 on the Mac? will become a perennial question on this list as soon as 5.10 is released. Maybe somebody can work on an Installer package. (How to install 5.10 *over* Apple's 5.8 may also be a topic to at least discuss--without testing, there's no way of knowing whether that will be dangerous or not. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that a Security Update that included a new Perl 5.8 would overwrite a user-installed 5.10 that was installed over the prior 5.8, would it not?) Trey
Re: Is there a True Boolean type in Perl?
In a message dated Mon, 15 Oct 2007, Doug McNutt writes:
At 18:20 -0700 10/15/07, Michael Barto wrote:
I think in the more newer languages, they have implemented true booleans. Perl
is kind of old school.
use constant TRUE = 1;
use constant FALSE = 0;
Is a complete solution in perl 5.
Um, no, it's not:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use constant TRUE = 1;
use constant FALSE = 0;
# Return a list of the sequence of even numbers from 0..$num
# or false if we got an odd number
sub evens_up_to {
my $num = shift;
if ($num % 2) {
# didn't get an even!
return FALSE;
}
return grep { not $_ % 2 } 0..$num;
}
for my $n (2, 4, 5) {
if (my @nums = evens_up_to($n)) {
print $n is even: @nums\n;
}
else {
print $n is not even.\n;
}
}
Output is:
2 is even: 0 2
4 is even: 0 2 4
5 is even: 0
Oops. Now, change the return line:
--- true.pl 2007-10-17 12:26:28.0 -0400
+++ truenew.pl 2007-10-17 12:27:20.0 -0400
@@ -13,5 +13,5 @@
if ($num % 2) {
# didn't get an even!
- return FALSE;
+ return; # false via bare return
}
Now you get:
2 is even: 0 2
4 is even: 0 2 4
5 is not even.
Without resorting to tied handles or objects or other heavyweight
chicanery, there is no single FALSE value you can define that will be
false in all cases. Better to use bare return when it may be used like
the above.
On the other hand, when a subroutine returns a scalar boolean, you
probably *do* want to return 0 or undef, otherwise you can get into this
nasty situation:
my ($ready1, $ready2) = ($data1-is_ready, $data2-is_ready);
If is_ready() uses bare return fore false, then in the case where $data1
is not ready but $data2 is, $ready1 would be set to 1 and $ready2 would be
undef, the exact opposite of what you'd expect, because $data1-is_ready
would return the empty list so $data2-is_ready would squeeze over and
fill the $ready1 spot. Nasty.
Moral of the story: there is no single false value in Perl 5, and trying
to pretend there is one that is valid in all situations is asking for
trouble.
As others have already noted, Perl 6 fixes this by both having a primitive
boolean type and by having True and False roles that any value can mix in
(so you can have a 0 but True value or a 1 but False one for example,
or a false list containing elements, or a true list that's empty).
Trey
Re: Thanks Apple! You snubbed perl yet again!
The Perl developers are kind of a quiet group. But I think that Apple has done a very reasonable job for developers. I remember even in old MacOS9 that this Perl was ahead of what I had on Sun Solaris OS. There is always a leading edge, but my application need to be distributed, therefore I am more conservative in the version I use. Apple's Perl version fits that real well. And I can always install multiple version of Perl because in a Unix OS. Just define a different path. On the otherside, Apple computers are the best developer's hardware. You can run you Debrian, Redhat, Ubuntu versions of Unix and so forth on the platform-either under Parallels or native. You can also run Solaris 10 (which is free I might add) along with all the varieties of Windows types--all running under one platform. Here you have all the neat MacOS development tools (e.g. Bbedeit, Dreamweaver, Affrus [Perl debugger], etc.) running in MacOSX, at the same time you have the Solaris 10 Application and database server running. At Jave One (in March), Sun Microsystem use Apple Laptops to show the new Java stuff and the developers carrier 4 to one for Apple laptops over the PC's. At the Solaris 10 presentation, Sun stated that their target laptop was from Apple because it woke up. Finally, my recent friends who have purchased new Apple Laptops, tell me that Windows XP runs better under Parallels than on their old PC. I assume that Debrian will be just as impressive. And as I reiterate, you could install the cutting edge Perl on you system and be fine still under MacOSX with all its tools. It is Unix anyway. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Some yummy facts about Leopard: Scripting Bridge Use Objective-C, Ruby, and Python programs to automate Mac applications. The new Scripting Bridge enables them to easily generate AppleEvents using a concise, AppleScript-like syntax. Ruby on Rails Work in a developer's dreamland. Leopard is the perfect platform for Ruby on Rails development, with Rails, Mongrel, and Capistrano built in. Not a single word about perl. No mention of CamelBones, using the Scripting Bridge for perl, or the fact that perl has CPAN with 12,000+ high quality modules while ruby has 4,000+ on rubyforge. Apple trumpets its POSIX conformation yet what UNIX is worth its weight in cat5 cable if it doesn't come with perl? It looks like I will have to stick with debian for developing my LAMP applications. Jeremiah -- Michael Barto Software Architect LogiQwest Inc. 16458 Bolsa Chica Street, # 15 Huntington Beach, CA92649 http://www.logiqwest.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel:714 377 3705 Fax:714 840 3937 Cell: 714 883 1949 'tis a gift to be simple This e-mail may contain LogiQwest proprietary information and should be treated as confidential.
Re: Thanks Apple! You snubbed perl yet again!
On Oct 17, 2007, at 6:09 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Some yummy facts about Leopard: Scripting Bridge Use Objective-C, Ruby, and Python programs to automate Mac applications. The new Scripting Bridge enables them to easily generate AppleEvents using a concise, AppleScript-like syntax. The Scripting Bridge simply generates an Objective-C wrapper that has methods corresponding to an app's scripting dictionary. That class is callable from *any* language that can call Objective-C methods. Ruby on Rails Work in a developer's dreamland. Leopard is the perfect platform for Ruby on Rails development, with Rails, Mongrel, and Capistrano built in. Sounds cool - the more the merrier. Not a single word about perl. No mention of CamelBones The fact that CamelBones is not included in Leopard isn't Apple's fault - it's mine. I didn't deliver a Leopard-ready CamelBones early enough for Apple to include it. They gave me a chance to do so, appointed an internal liason to be the contact point to deliver it to, and gave me free access to Leopard betas. On the other hand, built-in support for CamelBones is largely symbolic anyway. Neither Panther nor Tiger have it, so you'll have to embed the CamelBones framework in your app anyway, unless it's Leopard-only. sherm-- Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
Re: Thanks Apple! You snubbed perl yet again!
On Oct 17, 2007, at 11:43 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I had also hoped for a new version of perl They're shipping the latest release (5.8.8, as noted by Ed Moy) - what do you want them to do, ship bleadperl? sherm-- Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
Re: Thanks Apple! You snubbed perl yet again!
On Oct 17, 2007, at 12:16 PM, Trey Harris wrote: Perhaps someone with the inside scoop can give some real beef (though I understand that that sort of inside baseball is something Apple strongly discourages). But I suspect it's just a case of marketing types taking a temperature on what's hot and making sure the hot things were mentioned repeatedly. Look at the other items on http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html and it certainly looks that way. I'm not an insider, but that sounds right to me. Ruby is hot, Perl is not. (Why Python made the cut and not Perl, I'm not sure; I don't think Python's particularly hot anymore. But I don't pretend to understand marketing types.) One shouldn't read engineering decisions into marketing copy--if you've ever had to make purchasing decisions on behalf of a large company, you learn that quickly. I've mentioned this before, I think. The issue was one of sponsorship. There are Apple engineers who contribute (on their own time) to RubyCocoa and PyObjC. Those engineers stepped forward when management asked who would be willing to sponsor a foreign development language, quality-check external contributions and integrate them into Apple's internal build system, etc. A sponsor did come forward for Perl, shortly after my rant a few months ago. But my life (both personal and professional) has been rather hectic since, and I wasn't able to deliver the goods in time to ship with Leopard. Mea culpa. This does bring up something I don't think we've dealt with on this list in quite a few years though (when was it that OS X last came with Perl 5.6? Was it Jaguar? I can't recall)--for some period, probably well over a year at least, we'll be dealing with an OS X that does not have the most recent major release of Perl. Time to start working on the FAQ about how to install 5.10 alongside Apple's 5.8, since how do I get 5.10 on the Mac? will become a perennial question on this list as soon as 5.10 is released. Maybe somebody can work on an Installer package. Installing a newer Perl hasn't been a problem for a long time - since Jaguar. The problem back then was that the newer version - at the time, 5.8.0 - tried to install its core modules under /Library/Perl by default, mixing them up with any CPAN modules for 5.6 that had been installed in the same location. That problem was fixed, in two ways. First, as of 5.8.1, Perl reverted back to using the traditional /usr/local for its default install prefix. And second, Apple added version-specific subdirectories, so even if one were to use a prefix of /usr to install 5.10, its core modules still wouldn't overwrite any of 5.8.8's. The best thing Apple could do is remove the old article about upgrading Jaguar to 5.8. It was written before 5.8.1 was released, and reflects the /Library/Perl default location of 5.8.0. It's really no longer applicable. But, it's still the first article that comes up at apple.com when you google for macintosh upgrade perl, so a lot of people still follow its advice, thinking that something at apple.com is authoritative. At the very least, Apple should add this article is obsolete in big bold red letters at the top of the page. (How to install 5.10 *over* Apple's 5.8 may also be a topic to at least discuss If by discuss you mean strongly discourage, I agree with you. sherm-- Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net
PerlObjCBridge
Just a simple question. I have upgraded my Perl to 5.8.8, but I did not overwrite the default Perl, rather I installed 5.8.8 into /usr/ local/bin. I was wondering if I could still use PerlObjCBridge that comes with the Mac OS X Perl? I remember back in Jaguar if you upgraded your perl it wouldn't work with PerlObjCBridge. Is that still true? I can't wait for Leopard, but I'm going to have to since I can't afford to spend the money on it next week. Thanks for any insight.
Re: Leopard Perl version... @ 1192462023
Doug McNutt wrote: At 15:29 +0100 10/16/07, David Cantrell wrote: The one I'm most looking forward to is perl being relocatable. Current versions of perl have the values for @INC hard-coded into the binary at compile-time. You can add to @INC in perl 5 by defining an environment variable PERL5LIB.. It means a lot more than just doing that. You can't use PERL5LIB to *remove* things from the search path. -- David Cantrell | Minister for Arbitrary Justice Please stop rolling your Jargon Dice and explain the problem you are having to me in plain English, using small words. -- John Hardin, in the Monastery
Re: Thanks Apple! You snubbed perl yet again!
Not a single word about perl. No mention of CamelBones, using the Scripting Bridge for perl, or the fact that perl has CPAN with 12,000+ high quality I'm surprised that you are surprised. After all you took part in the thread in which Sherm said this: http://www.mail-archive.com/macosx@perl.org/msg09739.html Maybe Ed Moy can fill us in on why that internal pickup never happened but that is by the by. The real issue is that perl people using OS X didn't get excited enough about CamelBones to pitch in and help.[0] Can you really blame Apple for not getting hot and sweaty about it too? All we can hope for is that Sherm now comes out from under the dark cloak of an NDA and tells us something new and exciting... [0] I'm a designer and very lightweight scripter. Hacking a bridge is way beyond my capabilities. But I did help out with some graphics and an initial website design. And a command line tool for ShuX.
Re: PerlObjCBridge
macshaggy wrote: I can't wait for Leopard, but I'm going to have to since I can't afford to spend the money on it next week. I can wait for it, because I always like to let other people test an OS before I use it :-) -- David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david You can't judge a book by its cover, unless you're a religious nutcase
Re: Thanks Apple! You snubbed perl yet again!
On Oct 17, 2007, at 10:43 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Oct 17, 2007, at 5:25 PM, brian d foy wrote: In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It looks like I will have to stick with debian for developing my LAMP applications. If you want to work on the Mac, you still can. It doesn't sound like you want to though. It may sound like that to you, but if I didn't want to develop (in perl) on the Mac, why would I bother writing about this at all? Perhaps brian thought it was odd that you'd refuse to develop on a platform because of the wrong marketing statements, when all the right tools are there for both you and any target users. -Ken
