From EmailLists at SimonDorfman.com Wed May 12 01:45:34 2004 From: EmailLists at SimonDorfman.com (Simon Dorfman) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] Intro and mac perl program: affrus Message-ID: Hello NewOrleans.pm, I'm very new to perl (I know next to nothing) but since it's my good friend Dave Cash's language of choice, it must have some merit. So I'm going to see if I can't find a small project that would be a good learn perl while doing something cool. I'm looking forward to meeting y'all this Friday. Also, for any Mac OSX users on this list, this looks like a cool program for perl development and debugging. Below is a review. Simon http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07582 Perl Made Easy with Affrus 1.0 -- Late Night Software has a history of picking up where Apple leaves off. Mac OS X includes AppleScript, but Apple's own Script Editor isn't all that great as an editing environment, and it can't debug at all. Late Night's Script Debugger makes up for this, making AppleScript easily editable and debuggable. Late Night Software has continued in the same vein with the announcement of Affrus, which does the same for Perl. (Conflict of interest disclaimer: I wrote the manuals for both programs.) Perl is a popular Unix scripting language; Mac OS X includes Perl, but has no native application for easy editing and debugging of Perl scripts. Affrus meets this need. You can step through Perl scripts, or run to breakpoints that you set, evaluating expressions and examining variables in their runtime context. Syntax coloring clarifies the script's meaning; a pop-up menu lets you navigate to a subroutine's definition, even if it's in an external module. Affrus costs $100 and requires Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar or higher; a 30-day demo is available as a 4.9 MB download. [MAN] --MailBIT by Matt Neuburg From dave at gnofn.org Wed May 12 11:40:33 2004 From: dave at gnofn.org (Dave Cash) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] neworleans.pm.org Web Site Message-ID: <20040512113750.E28131@sparkie.gnofn.org> Hello, everyone. I've been working this morning on setting up our New Orleans Perl Mongers web site. At the moment, I've only really got three pages up: the home page, a page of Perl-related links and a small page about this mailing list. But the good news is that it's a wiki (using CGI::Kwiki), so if you have something you'd like to add, please feel free. The site is here: http://neworleans.pm.org/ See you on Friday! Dave /L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\_/T\_/E\_/A\_/C\_/H\_/L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\ Dave Cash Power to the People! Frolicking in Fields of Garlic Right On-Line! dave@gnofn.org Dig it all. From estrabd at yahoo.com Tue May 18 09:27:19 2004 From: estrabd at yahoo.com (Brett D. Estrade) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] hello Message-ID: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> My name is Brett Estrade. I won't be able to make the friday meetings, but I am willing to help out however I can. I have a modest level of knowledge of Perl, but I am always seeking out more. I am "perlfan" on PerlMonks... Brett ===== http://www.brettsbsd.net/~estrabd __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com From dave at gnofn.org Tue May 18 09:41:48 2004 From: dave at gnofn.org (Dave Cash) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] hello In-Reply-To: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <20040518093802.Q96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> On Tue, 18 May 2004, Brett D. Estrade wrote: > My name is Brett Estrade. I won't be able to make the friday meetings, > but I am willing to help out however I can. I have a modest level of > knowledge of Perl, but I am always seeking out more. > > I am "perlfan" on PerlMonks... Brett, Welcome to NewOrleans.pm. Sorry to hear you won't be able to make the meetings. At our first meeting last Friday, we talked about possibly working on some projects together. Mike told us about an idea he's had for a long time that could be fun to work on as a group. Watch this list and the web site for more info on that project and other NewOrleans.pm projects. Take care, Dave /L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\_/T\_/E\_/A\_/C\_/H\_/L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\ Dave Cash Power to the People! Frolicking in Fields of Garlic Right On-Line! dave@gnofn.org Dig it all. From estrabd at yahoo.com Tue May 18 10:20:29 2004 From: estrabd at yahoo.com (Brett D. Estrade) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] Perl Monks... In-Reply-To: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <1084893629.30809.196693972@webmail.messagingengine.com> I went to add a node on perl monks about the new group here, and I found an announcement already there - http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=353534 ... this lead me to wonder, how many folks on here lurk about perl monks, and what is your name there? I am perlfan... Brett ===== http://www.brettsbsd.net/~estrabd __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com From dave at gnofn.org Tue May 18 10:55:12 2004 From: dave at gnofn.org (Dave Cash) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] Group Projects (was Re: hello) In-Reply-To: <1084892445.26523.196692471@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518093802.Q96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1084892445.26523.196692471@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <20040518101515.W96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> On Tue, 18 May 2004, Brett D. Estrade wrote: > I may be able to make a couple - Friday is just a bad day for me. What > kind projects are you all looking at doing? The project Mike talked about is something he has been calling Cooperative DNS, but that doesn't really fully describe what it aims to do. Mike can probably explain it better than I can, but basically it would allow people who host web sites or other services over their DSL/cable connections to have some failover protections if their DSL were to go down. It would run as a P2P app, allow up to six computers to form a sort of ring. If a computer in the ring were to lose connectivity, then another computer in the ring would immediately change DNS records (for both SMTP and HTTP traffic) to make itself the new host. Then it would collect and hold any incoming mail until the downed machine could recover. It would also provide access to the web site via a local copy (if the web site on the downed machine were dynamically generated, then a static version of the downed site would be used instead). On Friday, we discussed that our first step will be to get together to design the application. I imagine that the design document(s) will appear on the wiki, and at that time it will make more sense than it probably did above in my description. A project idea I had was to create a clean, easy-to-use, object-oriented CPAN package that would allow for the merging of record data into a printable output. Originally, I just wanted to make a module that would take some data input and produce a PDF i could use to print labels. But now I think it would be better to generalize the I/O, something along the lines of SQL::Translator's Parser/Producer model (for this project it would be something like Data/Output). It would basically be an application of a word processor's "merge" capability, but without the word processor. Once this pacakge were written, I'm imagining it could be used something like this: #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use Merge::Simple; my $m = new Merge::Simple; $m->source( 'mysql', 'username', 'password' ); $m->fields( qw/name address1 address2 city state zip country/ ); $m->filter( { state => 'LA' } ); $m->sort( 'zip' ); $m->template( 'tt2', 'label.tt2' ); $m->layout( 'avery-3550' ); $m->produce( 'pdf' ); Or something like that (I just made up the name Merge::Simple--I'm open to other possibilities). I know there are other things out there which do parts of what I'm proposing, but nothing (that I know of) with this kind of flexible, extensible design. The work would mostly be in writing the various subclasses, so that it would support a variety of data sources (MySQL, Postgres, Class::DBI, Alzabo, etc.) a variety of templating solutions (Template Toolkit, HTML::Mason, HTML::Template, etc.), a variety of layouts (all known print labels, business cards, etc.) and a variety of output types (PDF, LaTeX, PostScript, HTML, XML, etc.). In the case of each of these, it would hopefully be relatively easy to design a custom solution through subclassing. So that's my idea, in a nutshell. If you have any project ideas, we'd love to hear them. I saw on your website that you're working on a PerlXUL project. That sounds very interesting. I don't know too much about XUL (I've done a little reading on it, but until I really use it, I'm sure it won't sink all the way in). Take care, Dave /L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\_/T\_/E\_/A\_/C\_/H\_/L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\ Dave Cash Power to the People! Frolicking in Fields of Garlic Right On-Line! dave@gnofn.org Dig it all. From estrabd at yahoo.com Tue May 18 11:25:50 2004 From: estrabd at yahoo.com (Brett D. Estrade) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] Re: Group Projects (was Re: hello) In-Reply-To: <20040518101515.W96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> References: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518093802.Q96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1084892445.26523.196692471@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518101515.W96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> Message-ID: <1084897550.14395.196698008@webmail.messagingengine.com> I started PerlXUL a while ago, but have not really had a chance to do too much - it is up on sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/perlxul/ ... As an extension of that, I am interested in creating a module that would allow one to easily map XML tags to callbacks - allowing one to create an XML based language that does *something*. This is also something I want to incorporate into PerlXUL. I encourage all who are interested to join the PerlXUL project, but be warned that it is still in the "planning" phase. The ideas about the cable/dns host failover project and the label maker sound awesome. I wrote a dirty php script that will sort addresses for bulk mailing according to ADC/zip code, and that can easily be turned into a perl implementation. That would allow for some useful sorting routines. The idea about the connected cable/dsl machines also sounds very interesting. It sounds like it could quickly become a distributed storage system that not only would provide failover capabilities, but allow for load balancing among a group of machines. Kind of bit-torrent-ish, but not. The only issue that I see with just changing the DNS records is that they take time to propagate throughout the 'net, so it wouldn't be a complete solution. The objective would be to have a the same file on multiple system that would be called at the same time - winner takes all. The only problem with that is that if the server that is doing the main requesting goes down, you are screwed. This sounds a little bit like the freecache project I saw on /. a few days ago. Are there project pages for any of these ideas posted anywhere? Brett On Tue, 18 May 2004 10:55:12 -0500 (CDT), "Dave Cash" said: > On Tue, 18 May 2004, Brett D. Estrade wrote: > > > I may be able to make a couple - Friday is just a bad day for me. What > > kind projects are you all looking at doing? > > The project Mike talked about is something he has been calling > Cooperative DNS, but that doesn't really fully describe what it aims > to do. > > Mike can probably explain it better than I can, but basically it > would allow people who host web sites or other services over their > DSL/cable connections to have some failover protections if their > DSL were to go down. > > It would run as a P2P app, allow up to six computers to form a sort > of ring. If a computer in the ring were to lose connectivity, then > another computer in the ring would immediately change DNS records > (for both SMTP and HTTP traffic) to make itself the new host. Then > it would collect and hold any incoming mail until the downed machine > could recover. It would also provide access to the web site via a > local copy (if the web site on the downed machine were dynamically > generated, then a static version of the downed site would be used > instead). > > On Friday, we discussed that our first step will be to get together > to design the application. I imagine that the design document(s) > will appear on the wiki, and at that time it will make more sense > than it probably did above in my description. > > A project idea I had was to create a clean, easy-to-use, > object-oriented CPAN package that would allow for the merging of > record data into a printable output. Originally, I just wanted to > make a module that would take some data input and produce a PDF i > could use to print labels. But now I think it would be better to > generalize the I/O, something along the lines of SQL::Translator's > Parser/Producer model (for this project it would be something like > Data/Output). It would basically be an application of a word > processor's "merge" capability, but without the word processor. > > Once this pacakge were written, I'm imagining it could be used > something like this: > > #!/usr/bin/perl > > use strict; > use Merge::Simple; > > my $m = new Merge::Simple; > $m->source( 'mysql', 'username', 'password' ); > $m->fields( qw/name address1 address2 city state zip country/ ); > $m->filter( { state => 'LA' } ); > $m->sort( 'zip' ); > $m->template( 'tt2', 'label.tt2' ); > $m->layout( 'avery-3550' ); > > $m->produce( 'pdf' ); > > Or something like that (I just made up the name Merge::Simple--I'm > open to other possibilities). > > I know there are other things out there which do parts of what I'm > proposing, but nothing (that I know of) with this kind of flexible, > extensible design. The work would mostly be in writing the various > subclasses, so that it would support a variety of data sources > (MySQL, Postgres, Class::DBI, Alzabo, etc.) a variety of templating > solutions (Template Toolkit, HTML::Mason, HTML::Template, etc.), a > variety of layouts (all known print labels, business cards, etc.) > and a variety of output types (PDF, LaTeX, PostScript, HTML, XML, > etc.). In the case of each of these, it would hopefully be > relatively easy to design a custom solution through subclassing. > > So that's my idea, in a nutshell. > > If you have any project ideas, we'd love to hear them. I saw on > your website that you're working on a PerlXUL project. That sounds > very interesting. I don't know too much about XUL (I've done a > little reading on it, but until I really use it, I'm sure it won't > sink all the way in). > > Take care, > > Dave > > /L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\_/T\_/E\_/A\_/C\_/H\_/L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\ > Dave Cash Power to the People! > Frolicking in Fields of Garlic Right On-Line! > dave@gnofn.org Dig it all. ===== http://www.brettsbsd.net/~estrabd __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com From dave at gnofn.org Tue May 18 15:19:30 2004 From: dave at gnofn.org (Dave Cash) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] [NewOrleans.pm] Re: Group Projects (was Re: hello) In-Reply-To: <1084897550.14395.196698008@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518093802.Q96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1084892445.26523.196692471@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518101515.W96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1084897550.14395.196698008@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <20040518151819.P96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> On Tue, 18 May 2004, Brett D. Estrade wrote: > I started PerlXUL a while ago, but have not really had a chance to do too > much - it is up on sourceforge at > http://sourceforge.net/projects/perlxul/ ... As an extension of that, I > am interested in creating a module that would allow one to easily map XML > tags to callbacks - allowing one to create an XML based language that > does *something*. This is also something I want to incorporate into > PerlXUL. Sounds interesting. > Are there project pages for any of these ideas posted anywhere? Not yet. Take care, Dave /L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\_/T\_/E\_/A\_/C\_/H\_/L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\ Dave Cash Power to the People! Frolicking in Fields of Garlic Right On-Line! dave@gnofn.org Dig it all. From dave at gnofn.org Tue May 18 15:20:10 2004 From: dave at gnofn.org (Dave Cash) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] Perl Monks... In-Reply-To: <1084893629.30809.196693972@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> <1084893629.30809.196693972@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <20040518151936.Y96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> On Tue, 18 May 2004, Brett D. Estrade wrote: > I went to add a node on perl monks about the new group here, and I found > an announcement already there - > http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=353534 ... this lead me to > wonder, how many folks on here lurk about perl monks, and what is your > name there? I am perlfan... I don't hang out on perlmonks too often, but my name there is garliqua. Dave /L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\_/T\_/E\_/A\_/C\_/H\_/L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\ Dave Cash Power to the People! Frolicking in Fields of Garlic Right On-Line! dave@gnofn.org Dig it all. From estrabd at yahoo.com Thu May 20 15:58:46 2004 From: estrabd at yahoo.com (Brett D. Estrade) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] New pages on wiki In-Reply-To: <20040518151819.P96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> References: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518093802.Q96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1084892445.26523.196692471@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518101515.W96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1084897550.14395.196698008@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518151819.P96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> Message-ID: <1085086726.27768.196866711@webmail.messagingengine.com> Guys, I hope you don't mind, but I took the initiative to place some more pages on the wiki: http://neworleans.pm.org/index.cgi?MeetingSummaries - contains basic summaries of each meeting for those that missed; also the place to add referenced links, etc http://neworleans.pm.org/index.cgi?MemberProjects - perl related projects that members are involved in http://neworleans.pm.org/index.cgi?ProjectIdeas - ideas for future projects waiting to be started Maybe one of you that was there can post a brief summary of the inaugural meeting... Thanks, Brett ===== http://www.brettsbsd.net/~estrabd __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com From dave at gnofn.org Thu May 20 17:06:45 2004 From: dave at gnofn.org (Dave Cash) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] New pages on wiki In-Reply-To: <1085086726.27768.196866711@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518093802.Q96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1084892445.26523.196692471@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518101515.W96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1084897550.14395.196698008@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518151819.P96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1085086726.27768.196866711@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <20040520170322.B26627@sparkie.gnofn.org> On Thu, 20 May 2004, Brett D. Estrade wrote: > I hope you don't mind, but I took the initiative to place some more pages > on the wiki: > > http://neworleans.pm.org/index.cgi?MeetingSummaries > - contains basic summaries of each meeting for those that missed; also > the place to add referenced links, etc > > http://neworleans.pm.org/index.cgi?MemberProjects > - perl related projects that members are involved in > > http://neworleans.pm.org/index.cgi?ProjectIdeas > - ideas for future projects waiting to be started > > Maybe one of you that was there can post a brief summary of the inaugural > meeting... Brett, Excellent! Thanks for taking the initiative to add these pages. (I must say, I'm falling in love with the whole wiki concept.) I've written up some notes for the first meeting, linked from your MeetingSummaries page. To anyone else who was there: please feel free to add to or correct anything I wrote. I also added my Merge::Simple (working name) project to the ProjectIdeas page. Thanks again! Dave /L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\_/T\_/E\_/A\_/C\_/H\_/L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\ Dave Cash Power to the People! Frolicking in Fields of Garlic Right On-Line! dave@gnofn.org Dig it all. From estrabd at yahoo.com Thu May 20 17:59:28 2004 From: estrabd at yahoo.com (Brett D. Estrade) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] New pages on wiki In-Reply-To: <20040520170322.B26627@sparkie.gnofn.org> References: <1084890439.19901.196689814@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518093802.Q96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1084892445.26523.196692471@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518101515.W96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1084897550.14395.196698008@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040518151819.P96018@sparkie.gnofn.org> <1085086726.27768.196866711@webmail.messagingengine.com> <20040520170322.B26627@sparkie.gnofn.org> Message-ID: <1085093968.17654.196872849@webmail.messagingengine.com> Glad you liked it. I also put up a summary about Perl 6 and related projects - http://neworleans.pm.org/index.cgi?Perl6Intro Brett On Thu, 20 May 2004 17:06:45 -0500 (CDT), "Dave Cash" said: > On Thu, 20 May 2004, Brett D. Estrade wrote: > > > I hope you don't mind, but I took the initiative to place some more pages > > on the wiki: > > > > http://neworleans.pm.org/index.cgi?MeetingSummaries > > - contains basic summaries of each meeting for those that missed; also > > the place to add referenced links, etc > > > > http://neworleans.pm.org/index.cgi?MemberProjects > > - perl related projects that members are involved in > > > > http://neworleans.pm.org/index.cgi?ProjectIdeas > > - ideas for future projects waiting to be started > > > > Maybe one of you that was there can post a brief summary of the inaugural > > meeting... > > Brett, > > Excellent! Thanks for taking the initiative to add these pages. > (I must say, I'm falling in love with the whole wiki concept.) > > I've written up some notes for the first meeting, linked from your > MeetingSummaries page. To anyone else who was there: please feel > free to add to or correct anything I wrote. > > I also added my Merge::Simple (working name) project to the > ProjectIdeas page. > > Thanks again! > > Dave > > /L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\_/T\_/E\_/A\_/C\_/H\_/L\_/E\_/A\_/R\_/N\ > Dave Cash Power to the People! > Frolicking in Fields of Garlic Right On-Line! > dave@gnofn.org Dig it all. ===== http://www.brettsbsd.net/~estrabd __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com From estrabd at yahoo.com Fri May 21 09:12:34 2004 From: estrabd at yahoo.com (Brett D. Estrade) Date: Mon Aug 2 21:33:04 2004 Subject: [Neworleans-pm] Grand-Rapids.pm Message-ID: <1085148754.4984.196909776@webmail.messagingengine.com> I just saw that the guy I am working on PerlXUL with has become president of http://grand-rapids.pm.org ... so that is another group we have a contact with. Brett ===== http://www.brettsbsd.net/~estrabd __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com