From: "Hal E. Fulton" Date: 2003-01-23T11:27:36+09:00 Subject: Re: Can we attack the 'not enough libraries' thing straight on? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Simon Cozens" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby To: "ruby-talk ML" Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 8:02 PM Subject: Re: Can we attack the 'not enough libraries' thing straight on? > dblack@candle.superlink.net writes: > > Also, I would advocate not getting embroiled in issues of naming, > > specifically hierarchical module naming (text/soundex, > > algorithms/sort/qsort, etc.) > > David, I respect you and I agree with you; but on this point I have to > differ. As I've said several times in the past, if people don't use > authoritative names for modules, they'll use cutesy names, and you'll > never know that Foozilla is a module to parse SGML. I know that if I > go to CPAN and get something called SGML::Parser then it's reasonably > likely to be a SGML parser. Naming is important! > > Please, let's not forget lessons we learnt - even today: someone was > asking for a Ruby Lisp interpreter. Now, what would that be called? > Language::LISP? Scheme.rb? No, of course, it was given the eminently > sensible name of Rouge, from which one could determine, well, > absolutely nothing at all, except that it might have something to do > with makeup. Naming is important! Pardon me while I play David's Advocate. :) Yes, names are important. But what DAB is addressing is the fact that people always say RAA < CPAN. And he wants to know: What are the top things missing? And I want to know, too. The point is: Let's not discuss naming conventions IN THIS THREAD. Let's discuss what new libraries are needed. And after all: Packages can be renamed MUCH more quickly than they can be developed. > The things that CPAN has that Ruby doesn't have: > 1) sensibly named modules > 2) reasonably comprehensive documentation > 3) that's it. Go forth and hackify. If that's true, then it's not so much an issue of content as of organization. But I'm not convinced everyone thinks the way you do on this. FWIW, I'm not a Perl hacker, so I don't really have an opinion. There's nothing from CPAN that I miss. :) Hal