On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Antonios Christofides wrote: > Hi everyone. > > I read a part of the archive of this list sometime ago, having reached > this list after desperately searching for a decent date module and > writing to Usenet as well. IIRC the founders of this list have said > that the list aims, among other things, in putting order to the Perl > date chaos. > > We agree in that there is chaos. I don't know yet if we disagree in > something, but I don't recall seeing a proposal on how to tackle this > chaos. There's the reefknot project, but that doesn't seem to be > anything more in that direction than an attempt to construct some > foundation modules. IMHO it doesn't matter if Date::ICal or whatever > is good; it might be the world's best date manipulation software. At > the point we've reached, with innumerable independent Perl date > modules, we need to ensure that whatever work we do will not be > classified as just "yet another module". > > The only way I've thought of getting out of this is to try to contact > as many date modules authors as possible and get some consensus on a > basic design, work altogether on that, and have the authors deprecate > their own original modules. I don't know if this is feasible, or even > if it is desirable (personally I desire it). > > Whether that's the way out of it or not, my question is: are we doing > anything besides writing code? Are there any thoughts or ideas on how > we'll get to this one or two basic foundation modules?
The real question is not whether we will get these foundational modules, but whether people will use them. The answer to this question is clearly: no, people will continue to invent their new date modules. This was stated to me very directly by a number of people, and so I moved on to other things, not wishing to be involved in yet another unwinable battle. Date::ICal's primary goal was to provide an implementation of the ICal calendar, in much the same way as my Date::Discordian, Date::ISO, and other yet-to-be-written modules provide implementations of those calendars. In each case, they are done *primarily* for my amusement, and not in an attempt to supercede what other folks have done. Perhaps I should state this more clearly in the docs. I write these things because calendars fascinate me, and I enjoy working with the algorithms. Date::ICal, however, appears to have become something a little bit more than that, as it was incorporated into the Net::ICal/Reefknot project. That's cool, but was not the initial intent. Your goal is admirable, but you should be aware of the history. All the Date:: and Time:: module authors have been contacted with exactly this goal in mind, and it is abundantly clear that there is no desire to cooperate on a unified set of Date/Time modules. And so, I have gone back to my hobbyist tinkering, and will continue to write modules for my own amusement, and if other people find value in them, that's cool, and, if not, then at least I have a hobby. -- Nothing is perfekt. Certainly not me. Success to failure. Just a matter of degrees.
