From yanick at babyl.dyndns.org Fri Dec 5 09:57:41 2008 From: yanick at babyl.dyndns.org (yanick at babyl.dyndns.org) Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 12:57:41 -0500 Subject: [Ottawa-pm] Perl Advent calendars Message-ID: <20081205175741.GA24865@gilgamesh.babyl.dyndns.org> With December come the joyful tradition of Advent calendars. For amusement and education, here's the link to the Perl & Catalyst Advent Calendars. Is anyone aware of any other one out there? http://perladvent.pm.org/2008/ http://www.catalystframework.org/calendar/2008 Ho ho ho, `/anick From yanick at babyl.dyndns.org Tue Dec 9 10:56:50 2008 From: yanick at babyl.dyndns.org (Yanick Champoux) Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:56:50 -0500 Subject: [Ottawa-pm] Generating dead-tree docs with Pod::Manual Message-ID: <493EBF72.8070504@babyl.dyndns.org> At the meeting of last week, Dave and I were talking of Rose::DB. At some point he mentioned that the documentation is a wee bit hard to follow, to which I replied that Pod::Manual might be able to help. As there were no keyboards close by at the time, we both took note to discuss this in further details later on. Well, now seems like a good 'later on' moment. :-) In a nutshell, Pod::Manual has been born off my desire to easily gather the POD of several modules into a nice print-friendly format. The principal features I was aiming for were: - Page numbering, with an index at the beginning and section titles given in the pages' header/footer. - Possibility to tinker the gathered POD to make it more print-friendly. For example, all PODs from Rose::DB have the same License section. I don't really need to have it printed for every module -- only once in an appendix would suffice. - Purtiness. The earlier versions of Pod::Manual would do the POD to PDF transformation via LaTeX. Which is not so bad if you already have TeX installed on your system. But if it's not already there, tackling such a behemoth might be a rather strong turn-off. I've glanced for a time at FOP-like transformations, but... aah... didn't fell in love with the technology. I, however, found Prince, a very nice docbook-to-pdf piece of software. All that it needs to transform vanilla-flavored docbook into a pdf document is a regular CSS stylesheet. Prince itself is not free software, but they do give out a trial version (that can be used for a long as you want if it's for personal/non-profit purposes) of the software that adds a little 'P' logo to the first page of your printouts. To give a relevant example, here's the script that I used to generate my Rose::DB manual: #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Pod::Manual; my $manual = Pod::Manual->new( title => 'Rose::DB::Object', pdf_generator => 'prince' # or 'latex' ); $manual->add_chapters( qw/ Rose::DB::Object::Tutorial Rose::DB::Tutorial Rose::DB::Object Rose::DB::Object::Metadata Rose::DB::Object::Manager Rose::DB::SQLite / ); my $pdf_file = 'rose-db-object_manual.pdf'; $manual->save_as_pdf( $pdf_file ); print "pdf document '$pdf_file' created\n"; __END__ Sample output of the LaTeX and Prince transforms are at http://babyl.dyndns.org/misc/rose-db-object-latex.pdf and http://babyl.dyndns.org/misc/rose-db-object-prince.pdf Pod::Manual is still very rough and need a lot of work, buuuuut if you feel like a brave beta-tester, it can be found on CPAN (http://search.cpan.org/dist/Pod-Manual/) . Or if you feel like an even-braver contributor, the code is on GitHub: http://github.com/yanick/pod-manual/tree/master. (the codebase is probably going to be Moosified soon) :-) Enjoy! `/anick From shawnhcorey at magma.ca Tue Dec 9 11:48:14 2008 From: shawnhcorey at magma.ca (Mr. Shawn H. Corey) Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:48:14 -0500 Subject: [Ottawa-pm] Generating dead-tree docs with Pod::Manual In-Reply-To: <493EBF72.8070504@babyl.dyndns.org> References: <493EBF72.8070504@babyl.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <1228852094.15163.57.camel@mungo> On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 13:56 -0500, Yanick Champoux wrote: > Pod::Manual is still very rough and need a lot of work, > buuuuut if you > feel like a brave beta-tester, it can be found on CPAN > (http://search.cpan.org/dist/Pod-Manual/) . Or if you feel like an > even-braver contributor, the code is on GitHub: > http://github.com/yanick/pod-manual/tree/master. (the codebase is > probably going to be Moosified soon) :-) > I goofed around with a pod2pdf via Pod::Parser and PDF::API2. The biggest problem was switching fonts. The second biggest was dealing with non-breaking sequences, S<...> I might still have the software on some old CD. With enough prompting, I might even dig it up :) -- Just my 0.00000002 million dollars worth, Shawn The key to success is being too stupid to realize you can fail. From yanick at babyl.dyndns.org Tue Dec 9 14:47:18 2008 From: yanick at babyl.dyndns.org (Yanick Champoux) Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:47:18 -0500 Subject: [Ottawa-pm] Generating dead-tree docs with Pod::Manual In-Reply-To: <1228852094.15163.57.camel@mungo> References: <493EBF72.8070504@babyl.dyndns.org> <1228852094.15163.57.camel@mungo> Message-ID: <493EF576.4090001@babyl.dyndns.org> Mr. Shawn H. Corey wrote: > I goofed around with a pod2pdf via Pod::Parser and PDF::API2. The > biggest problem was switching fonts. The second biggest was dealing > with non-breaking sequences, S<...> I might still have the software on > some old CD. With enough prompting, I might even dig it up :) Going all the way down to building the pdf yourself sounds a wee bit hardcore. But if you still have if around, sure, I'd like to have a peek. :-) Btw, it is in any way,shape or form related to http://search.cpan.org/dist/pod2pdf/ ? Joy, `/anick From yanick at babyl.dyndns.org Wed Dec 10 11:44:43 2008 From: yanick at babyl.dyndns.org (Yanick Champoux) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:44:43 -0500 Subject: [Ottawa-pm] Mark Jason Dominus' Higher-Order Perl book available for download Message-ID: <49401C2B.1020606@babyl.dyndns.org> at http://hop.perl.plover.com/book/ And right on time to print and read by the fireplace during the Holidays too! :-) Enjoy, `/anick From shawnhcorey at magma.ca Fri Dec 12 10:52:37 2008 From: shawnhcorey at magma.ca (Mr. Shawn H. Corey) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:52:37 -0500 Subject: [Ottawa-pm] Meaninglessness Rulez Message-ID: <1229107957.15163.88.camel@mungo> FYI, a little something about programmers from Boing Boing : http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/12/comfort-with-meaning.html -- Just my 0.00000002 million dollars worth, Shawn The key to success is being too stupid to realize you can fail. From yanick at babyl.dyndns.org Mon Dec 15 09:07:31 2008 From: yanick at babyl.dyndns.org (Yanick Champoux) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:07:31 -0500 Subject: [Ottawa-pm] Meaninglessness Rulez In-Reply-To: <1229107957.15163.88.camel@mungo> References: <1229107957.15163.88.camel@mungo> Message-ID: <49468ED3.3080105@babyl.dyndns.org> Mr. Shawn H. Corey wrote: > FYI, a little something about programmers from Boing Boing : > http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/12/comfort-with-meaning.html I think I get what the author is trying to convey, but I'm not sure that "meaningless" is the word he's looking for. What he's talking about seems to be more the aptitude to disassociate the goal of an activity with the activity itself. According to his definition, of course the rules that a computer follow are meaningless. And so are strings of mathematical relationships, or two wooden boards nailed together. It's only for us that they do gather a meaning at the end and become a program, the proof of a theorem or a birdhouse. And yes, people that assume that the computer will "just figure it out" are just like people assuming the birdhouse will stand, no matter they didn't know where the nails ought to be hammered -- they just forgo causality for the empty promises of wishing thinking. This being said, I think I'm ripe for my first coffee, now. :-) Joy, `/anick From yanick at babyl.dyndns.org Mon Dec 22 21:17:11 2008 From: yanick at babyl.dyndns.org (Yanick Champoux) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:17:11 -0500 Subject: [Ottawa-pm] Perl is now Gitified Message-ID: <49507457.4040008@babyl.dyndns.org> Perl's development is now done over Git. The repository, with Perl's total history (yes, all 21 years of it) is now available at http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git. To this, I have but a one-word comment: Cool. Joy, `/anick From mark at mark.mielke.cc Mon Dec 22 21:32:46 2008 From: mark at mark.mielke.cc (Mark Mielke) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:32:46 -0500 Subject: [Ottawa-pm] Perl is now Gitified In-Reply-To: <49507457.4040008@babyl.dyndns.org> References: <49507457.4040008@babyl.dyndns.org> Message-ID: <495077FE.7060402@mark.mielke.cc> Yanick Champoux wrote: > > Perl's development is now done over Git. The repository, with > Perl's total history (yes, all 21 years of it) is now available at > http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git. > > To this, I have but a one-word comment: > > Cool. > My thinking is more curious. I like Git and use it myself, but hoping that it continues to work out its geeky wrinkles... :-) Each project that switches over increases the number of people with potential to scratch another Git itch. Sounds great? :-) Cheers, mark -- Mark Mielke From yanick at babyl.dyndns.org Tue Dec 23 09:20:07 2008 From: yanick at babyl.dyndns.org (Yanick Champoux) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:20:07 -0500 Subject: [Ottawa-pm] Perl is now Gitified In-Reply-To: <495077FE.7060402@mark.mielke.cc> References: <49507457.4040008@babyl.dyndns.org> <495077FE.7060402@mark.mielke.cc> Message-ID: <49511DC7.50208@babyl.dyndns.org> Mark Mielke wrote: > My thinking is more curious. I like Git and use it myself, but hoping > that it continues to work out its geeky wrinkles... :-) Considering the track record of Linus' previous big project, you might have to wait a leeeeettle longer to see all the geeky wrinkles ironed out of this one. ;-) Joy, `/anick