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Chris Nandor wrote in to tell us that Larry Wall has announced his vision for perl 6 as part of this keynote at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. You can read an announcement at Perl.org or read Chris's summary of things (like information about the from-scratch rewrite being planned!)

The following was written by Chris "Pudge" Nandor... Perl Guru, Slashcode Guru, and all around swell guy.

Perl 6 To Be Complete Rewrite (But Not What You Think)

Larry Wall and other active Perl porters and Perl helpers met on Tuesday afternoon at Perl Conference 4.0 and mapped out a what is planned to become a complete rewrite of Perl that will become Perl 6 in 18 to 24 months, with a prerelease targeted for next year's conference.

Perl 5 will not be abandoned, but will primarily be concerned with bugfixes both major and minor.

The meeting for members of the perl5-porters mailing list was the result of an earlier, smaller meeting of Wall, Nathan Torkington, Chip Salzenberg, and others who basically decided that Perl needed to be fixed in certain ways, and that a rewrite was the best way to do it. Salzenberg started the Topaz project two years ago, to reimplement Perl in C++. Though Topaz itself will not be the basis for Perl 6, Salzenberg noted that the lessons learned in the experience will be very helpful to the new effort.

Torkington led the three-hour meeting, starting off by saying what was wrong with Perl. Much of the focus on the problems with Perl centered around how increasingly difficult it was to improve, extend, and embed Perl. A rewrite and redesign are needed, he said, and maybe it is time for a hard change. So while the focus of the effort seems to be on improving the Perl guts and API, the project will also be used as an opportunity to clean out some of the cruft, including bad and seldom-used features.

Some of the primary (and still vague) goals of the effort will be to reimplement the core so it is better, stronger, and faster; improve syntax; add new features where appropriate; have better version and installation management for perl and its modules; and have a clear and automated migration path, which may include a backward compatibility mode. Some old features may be removed, like typeglobs. Others will be improved.

The group hopes to re-shape Perl community, too. Instead of one all-encompassing perl5-porters list, tightly focused mailing lists with a terminal lifespan will be formed. To start off, the mailing list bootstrap at perl.org will be for discussion of the beginnings of the project. Like most, if not all, other new lists, when it has fulfilled its purpose, it will be closed.

Wall said, "Perl 5 was my rewrite of perl ... I think this should be the community's rewrite of perl, and the community's rewrite of the community."

Specifics have not yet been ironed out. A group has been formed to begin the work, which will primarily consist of planning the work to be done. No coding is to be done at this stage, only planning and support. Roles were determined for the group, and then they were filled. They now include the perl 5 maintainer (Jarkko Hietaniemi and Nick Ing-Simmons), the language design pumpking (Larry Wall), the internals design pumpking (Dan Sugalski), the documentation manager (Adam Turoff), the system administrator (Ask Bjoern Hansen), the quality assurance bloke (Michael Schwern), the spokesdroid (brian d foy), the customer relations person (Dick Hardt), and the project manager himself, Nathan Torkington. Other porters, such as Chip Salzenberg, volunteered to consult when needed.

Some of the short term goals of this group are to draft a language specification, start an RFC channel, get feedback, and set up mailing lists, a documentation repository, and a web site. Hansen will be setting up the mailing lists. The bootstrap list will be open to the public, while the list for the intial small group of people will be closed for posting by anyone not on the list. All lists will be readable by the public, through the web, and perhaps through email. Turoff is going to be preparing the notes for the morning meeting, and foy will be posting the notes and the mailing list links on the www.perl.org web site.

Chris Nandor wrote in to tell us that Larry Wall has announced his vision for perl 6 as part of this keynote at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. You can read an announcement at Perl.org or read Chris's summary of things (like information about the from-scratch rewrite being planned!)

The following was written by Chris "Pudge" Nandor... Perl Guru, Slashcode Guru, and all around swell guy.

Perl 6 To Be Complete Rewrite (But Not What You Think)

Larry Wall and other active Perl porters and Perl helpers met on Tuesday afternoon at Perl Conference 4.0 and mapped out a what is planned to become a complete rewrite of Perl that will become Perl 6 in 18 to 24 months, with a prerelease targeted for next year's conference.

Perl 5 will not be abandoned, but will primarily be concerned with bugfixes both major and minor.

The meeting for members of the perl5-porters mailing list was the result of an earlier, smaller meeting of Wall, Nathan Torkington, Chip Salzenberg, and others who basically decided that Perl needed to be fixed in certain ways, and that a rewrite was the best way to do it. Salzenberg started the Topaz project two years ago, to reimplement Perl in C++. Though Topaz itself will not be the basis for Perl 6, Salzenberg noted that the lessons learned in the experience will be very helpful to the new effort.

Torkington led the three-hour meeting, starting off by saying what was wrong with Perl. Much of the focus on the problems with Perl centered around how increasingly difficult it was to improve, extend, and embed Perl. A rewrite and redesign are needed, he said, and maybe it is time for a hard change. So while the focus of the effort seems to be on improving the Perl guts and API, the project will also be used as an opportunity to clean out some of the cruft, including bad and seldom-used features.

Some of the primary (and still vague) goals of the effort will be to reimplement the core so it is better, stronger, and faster; improve syntax; add new features where appropriate; have better version and installation management for perl and its modules; and have a clear and automated migration path, which may include a backward compatibility mode. Some old features may be removed, like typeglobs. Others will be improved.

The group hopes to re-shape Perl community, too. Instead of one all-encompassing perl5-porters list, tightly focused mailing lists with a terminal lifespan will be formed. To start off, the mailing list bootstrap at perl.org will be for discussion of the beginnings of the project. Like most, if not all, other new lists, when it has fulfilled its purpose, it will be closed.

Wall said, "Perl 5 was my rewrite of perl ... I think this should be the community's rewrite of perl, and the community's rewrite of the community."

Specifics have not yet been ironed out. A group has been formed to begin the work, which will primarily consist of planning the work to be done. No coding is to be done at this stage, only planning and support. Roles were determined for the group, and then they were filled. They now include the perl 5 maintainer (Jarkko Hietaniemi and Nick Ing-Simmons), the language design pumpking (Larry Wall), the internals design pumpking (Dan Sugalski), the documentation manager (Adam Turoff), the system administrator (Ask Bjoern Hansen), the quality assurance bloke (Michael Schwern), the spokesdroid (brian d foy), the customer relations person (Dick Hardt), and the project manager himself, Nathan Torkington. Other porters, such as Chip Salzenberg, volunteered to consult when needed.

Some of the short term goals of this group are to draft a language specification, start an RFC channel, get feedback, and set up mailing lists, a documentation repository, and a web site. Hansen will be setting up the mailing lists. The bootstrap list will be open to the public, while the list for the intial small group of people will be closed for posting by anyone not on the list. All lists will be readable by the public, through the web, and perhaps through email. Turoff is going to be preparing the notes for the morning meeting, and foy will be posting the notes and the mailing list links on the www.perl.org web site.

Chris Nandor wrote in to tell us that Larry Wall has announced his vision for perl 6 as part of this keynote at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. You can read an announcement at Perl.org or read Chris's summary of things (like information about the from-scratch rewrite being planned!)

The following was written by Chris "Pudge" Nandor... Perl Guru, Slashcode Guru, and all around swell guy.

Perl 6 To Be Complete Rewrite (But Not What You Think)

Larry Wall and other active Perl porters and Perl helpers met on Tuesday afternoon at Perl Conference 4.0 and mapped out a what is planned to become a complete rewrite of Perl that will become Perl 6 in 18 to 24 months, with a prerelease targeted for next year's conference.

Perl 5 will not be abandoned, but will primarily be concerned with bugfixes both major and minor.

The meeting for members of the perl5-porters mailing list was the result of an earlier, smaller meeting of Wall, Nathan Torkington, Chip Salzenberg, and others who basically decided that Perl needed to be fixed in certain ways, and that a rewrite was the best way to do it. Salzenberg started the Topaz project two years ago, to reimplement Perl in C++. Though Topaz itself will not be the basis for Perl 6, Salzenberg noted that the lessons learned in the experience will be very helpful to the new effort.

Torkington led the three-hour meeting, starting off by saying what was wrong with Perl. Much of the focus on the problems with Perl centered around how increasingly difficult it was to improve, extend, and embed Perl. A rewrite and redesign are needed, he said, and maybe it is time for a hard change. So while the focus of the effort seems to be on improving the Perl guts and API, the project will also be used as an opportunity to clean out some of the cruft, including bad and seldom-used features.

Some of the primary (and still vague) goals of the effort will be to reimplement the core so it is better, stronger, and faster; improve syntax; add new features where appropriate; have better version and installation management for perl and its modules; and have a clear and automated migration path, which may include a backward compatibility mode. Some old features may be removed, like typeglobs. Others will be improved.

The group hopes to re-shape Perl community, too. Instead of one all-encompassing perl5-porters list, tightly focused mailing lists with a terminal lifespan will be formed. To start off, the mailing list bootstrap at perl.org will be for discussion of the beginnings of the project. Like most, if not all, other new lists, when it has fulfilled its purpose, it will be closed.

Wall said, "Perl 5 was my rewrite of perl ... I think this should be the community's rewrite of perl, and the community's rewrite of the community."

Specifics have not yet been ironed out. A group has been formed to begin the work, which will primarily consist of planning the work to be done. No coding is to be done at this stage, only planning and support. Roles were determined for the group, and then they were filled. They now include the perl 5 maintainer (Jarkko Hietaniemi and Nick Ing-Simmons), the language design pumpking (Larry Wall), the internals design pumpking (Dan Sugalski), the documentation manager (Adam Turoff), the system administrator (Ask Bjoern Hansen), the quality assurance bloke (Michael Schwern), the spokesdroid (brian d foy), the customer relations person (Dick Hardt), and the project manager himself, Nathan Torkington. Other porters, such as Chip Salzenberg, volunteered to consult when needed.

Some of the short term goals of this group are to draft a language specification, start an RFC channel, get feedback, and set up mailing lists, a documentation repository, and a web site. Hansen will be setting up the mailing lists. The bootstrap list will be open to the public, while the list for the intial small group of people will be closed for posting by anyone not on the list. All lists will be readable by the public, through the web, and perhaps through email. Turoff is going to be preparing the notes for the morning meeting, and foy will be posting the notes and the mailing list links on the www.perl.org web site.

Python is an object-oriented scripting language, similiar in ideas (if not in style) to Perl. It's getting more and more popular, as people discover the benefits brought by its simple style. It's a natural under Windows, thanks to good object-orientation. Like many free software projects, though, the Windows port of Python has suffered from poor documentation. Until now, that is. [Updated 15:00GMT by timothy -- fixed link to tutorial.](Read more.)

Python Programming On Win32 author Mark Hammond & Andy Robinson pages 652 publisher O'Reilly, 01/2000 rating 8.5 reviewer chromatic ISBN 1-56592-621-8 summary A great introduction both to programming Python under Windowsand to COM programming for non-Windows programmers.

What's Good?

Python has made programming under Win32 really, really easy. Not that it didn't need to be easy before -- it's just that nobody knew how it worked. This book knocks that for six. It covers a basic introduction to Python, builds a slightly more advanced tutorial on that and then covers a load of other topics to finish off. The really big secret is that the information inside isn't just for Windows, though. Quite a lot of it is applicable elsewhere. Topics like printing output to PDF files, using POP3 and HTTP in python would be a useful addition to anybody using Python who isn't already aware of these things. If you've just started learning Python, there will be tons of ideas for you to experiment with.

But the big thrust of the book is COM (or OLE, or ActiveX or whatever it's called this week). The book slides you gently in, explaining the ideas behind OO programming that you need to know to take advantage of it, before presenting simple demos of what COM can do and how it was achieved. Then it takes you on to bigger and better things, and specifically to an accounting system that was developed using Python/Win32. Please ignore the word "accounting" in the previous sentence! It's just an application that the book uses to demonstrate Python and COM working together and ways of using it (e.g. shoveling data straight into Excel from the aforementioned accounting system).

The remaining part of the book has plenty to sink your teeth into, from Internet to serial communication, along with little things that you'll soon begin to appreciate as essential, like user management using Python. If you suddenly want to change all of your users somehow, you'll be grateful that you can do it programmatically.

The book brims with practical ideas that focus on one programming paradigm that a lot of people seem to forget about: Getting Things Done. Also, it was written by the author of the code, and it shows.

In short, this book brings the Windows world the kind of programmability that Unix people have come to expect. And the kind that Unix people can expect to see, too; from what I've seen of Bonobo, it's rather similiar to COM.

What's Bad?

No book is without its flaws, and this one has a couple. My biggest bugbear would be with the Python tutorial section: At 8 pages, it's just not long enough for someone who isn't accustomed to Python. While the online Python tutorial is reasonable, I would have expected a better introduction, given that Python isn't as well known as it could be. That could put some people off the book.

My other complaint is that the book is too small. Well, no -- it's just right actually, and has the nice bendy RepKover thing. But the book is burdened with so many topics that at times some subjects feel like they could have used a bit more in-depth treatment, or more extended examples. The authors must have felt the same way, since at the end of most chapters, there are pointers to further information, which is actually pretty useful.

Summary

I'm sure that there are a lot of Slashdot readers who run Windows on a regular basis. I think that this book will help a lot of them understand their environment better and help them tame it. It's also useful for die-hard Unix-heads like me, who are suddenly faced with a need to get things done under Windows and would like a clearer explanation of what they are up against, as well as some interesting ideas for when they return. Lastly, it's definitely useful to anybody already using the Python Win32 extensions, because the documentation that comes with those extensions cannot compare to this lovely, practical book.

Table Of Contents

1. Introduction to Python

   1. What is Python?
   2. Python Language Review
   3. Python on Windows
   4. Integrated Development Environments for Python
   5. Introduction to COM
   
   

2. Building an Advanced Python Application

   1. A Financial Modeling Toolkit in Python
   2. Building a GUI with COM
   3. Adding a Macro Language
   4. Integration with Excel
   5. Printed Output
   6. Distributing Our Application
   
   

3. Python on Windows Cookbook

   1. Advanced Python and COM
   2. Databases
   3. Working with Email
   4. Using the Basic Internet Protocols
   5. Windows NT Administration
   6. Processes and Files
   7. Windows NT Services
   8. Communications
   9. GUI Development
   10. Active Scripting
   11. Extending and Embedding with Visual C++ and Delphi
   
   

4. Appendixes

   1. Key Python Modules and Functions
   2. Win32 Extensions Reference
   3. The Python Database API Version 2.0
   4. Threads
   
   

brockgr was the first to note that Perl 5.6.0 has been released and has begun propagating through CPAN. Anyone have a changelog or something I can link to?

david landgren writes " The Perl Institute has decided to call it a day. The main reason, according to Larry Wall, is that the Institute was "top-down", but Perl's culture is much more "bottom-up". The Institute's most valuable assets, the domains perl.org and cpan.org have been offered to the Perl Mongers. By the way, have you checked out whether there's a Perl Monger chapter in your part of the world? "

david landgren writes " The Perl Institute has decided to call it a day. The main reason, according to Larry Wall, is that the Institute was "top-down", but Perl's culture is much more "bottom-up". The Institute's most valuable assets, the domains perl.org and cpan.org have been offered to the Perl Mongers. By the way, have you checked out whether there's a Perl Monger chapter in your part of the world? "

david landgren writes " The Perl Institute has decided to call it a day. The main reason, according to Larry Wall, is that the Institute was "top-down", but Perl's culture is much more "bottom-up". The Institute's most valuable assets, the domains perl.org and cpan.org have been offered to the Perl Mongers. By the way, have you checked out whether there's a Perl Monger chapter in your part of the world? "

Ed Oviedo writes "I just saw that perl.org has put up a survey to find out the number of different platforms that people have run perl on. Their total count so far seems a bit low. I am sure perl hackin' slashdotters can help fill out their counts.". Alright you know the drill time for the /. effect.