Mozilla's mail client is just fine. Great spam filtering, multiple accounts, the ability to turn off everything but plain text, including cookies. Throw in the spell-checker add on and you have a great mail client.
I just don't understand why everyone complains about it so much. Its not hard to use. Its not buggy. What's the big complaint about?
I haven't installed 9.1, but with 9 if you choose workstation install, I don't think it installs any servers and if you do server install I don't think it installs a lot of the graphical stuff.
And the advanced install warns you about what servers you installed and gives you the option to turn them off.
Do IE and Mozilla actually run standards based JScript well today?
For the most part, yes. Its definitely much better than it was back in the Netscape 3/4 days. Much of Mozilla's UI is done with Javascript so I think that makes the implementation better than before as bugs in JS could cause bugs in the UI.
IE's Jscript still isn't up to that level, but again its better than it used to be. The DOM is almost identical and that helps. IE 5+ also has implemented "getElementById()" and done away with the old "document.all" style of finding page elements.
There are a few differences. This page, is a short informative look at a few of the major differences and some ways to get around them.
Javascript is not dead if you stick to the DOM and ECMA script standards, most stuff works. As a web developer I use a fair amount of Javascript and it works fine, even without browser detection.
The problem with Javascript is that there are so many crappy programs out there that don't properly utilize the language, resorting to stupid 'Netscape' or 'IE' detection hacks rather than testing for the existance of functions. Then the so called 'web developers' just download this stuff and stick it in. "If it works in IE its good enough for me"... I know, I work with several of them.
Oh come on! Do you seriously think your grandma can install Office or Windows? Seriously! People call me all the time because they can't figure out how to install stuff, or what choices they need to make if they get the installer to run, or heck even how to get the computer to boot of a disk or CD (in the case of installing an OS).
"Grandma" runs whatever came on her computer when she bought it at Best Buy, give or take a few viruses she opened in Outbreak.
As for your opinion of Open Office, its your opinion, if you like Office, fine, use it. I prefer the other. But quit spreading FUD about how hard it is to install the alternatives, because its not really any different.
So tempting to mod you down like the troll you are but why not bite instead.
If you just go to this little link right here you'll find a very easy to use Office app that you can install in a few clicks on Windows, Solaris or Linux. And not only does it not have to be compiled, it doesn't cost your money or freedom either!
Or perhaps you'd like the entire linux OS, free of licensing, without having to compile a single thing. Herearejust a fewexamples.
Ahh yes the great online documentation where i have to know the name of the function to find anything useful. Typing 'log errors' into the 'online documentation' search directs me to a google search of the entire site that does not produce the page you're refering to. Too bad that PHP doesn't come with easily accessable documentation like most other languages on a Unix system. Perl for instance has its manual divided into clearly marked sections so you can find what you're looking for without having to know Perl at all.
Your biggest complaint is that you are too lazy to read the manual and you expect everything to be done for you. No programming language can help you with this.
If that were true I'd like using PHP as it does do everything for you without anyone having to learn those pesky programming practices like separating presentation from design, or namespaces, or scoping.
As for the error handling, thanks for showing me the document you refered to. However after reading it, its still seems that PHP does not throw a code 500 to the webserver. Even if it did I still stand behind what I said before, as the default implementation of errors is non-standard and exposes things like real pathnames to the outside world.
For all your complaints about Perl, its still far better than PHP because of the namespace and extentablity issues alone. Besides PHP derived its syntax from Perl (they wanted to 'fix' Perl). As for mod_perl, at first it was hard to get into but they've made a ton of improvements, most times if you've used 'strict' and followed good coding practice your CGI will plug right into mod_perl with no changes. mod_perl lets you do cool things with Apache as well.
All of this is IMHO of course. My biggest complaint about PHP is the joke that they pass as "error handling". Yeah great, thanks for exposing all my path names to the outside world if something goes wrong. And sure you can turn it off but then you never know if something went wrong. Here's a hint, how about using the error_log like everyone else, and properly stop parsing and send a code 500 to the webserver??
The problem with your scenerio is that he would still be prosecuted and depending on the circumstances (did he hold a gun to the clerk etc.) he might go to jail, at the very least he'd still have to pay back the money for the medicine as well as pay some kind of fine.
It all goes back to two wrongs don't make a right and the ends don't justify the means.
Somewhat more on-topic. I agree with the parent poster. Copyright infringement is illegal. Committing the an act of infringement by sharing music does not justify the intended end of breaking up an illegal cartel. Besides I highly doubt that such an goal would be met by infrindging the copyright. If anything it makes their music more popular. Someone else posted this and i agree, it isn't about money, its about who controls the distribution of the content. The RIAA is afraid that if artists screw their heads on correctly that they'll figure out that they don't need a big company to put their music in stores anymore.
The way to shut down the illegal cartel is to buy music from independant musicians and encourage others to do the same. Its perfectly legal, they can't sue you if you do that. And even if the RIAA never goes away you can feel better in knowing that you aren't listening to over-produced garbage and that you haven't supported them.
Hahaha! That's great. I'd call it a score 5 troll but the terrorism bit probably goes a bit far. Worth a 4 at least. Too bad you posted anonymously.
BTW After we get Kazaa are we going to label Finland as a rogue nation? After all that Linus guy is from there and every red-blooded American knows that Linux is taking money from all the good corporations.
I'll second what alienw said and go a step further.
Why does everyone complain about OpenOffice? I've used Star/Open Office for years now and I haven't come across a Word or Excel doc that it couldn't open. The only problem I ever had was with PowerPoint but it still opened it just didn't have some of the same clip art.
Contrast that to Word that half the time mangles documents produced with older versions of itself. I've had Word 2000 and XP both completely trash a Word 95 document.
Configuration? How is editing a (usually) documented text file harder than trying to hack the registry? Besides most of the newer distros come with a configuration program built right into your favorite GUI, as well as update tools which IMHO work far better than break your network connections, own your computer type program otherwise known as Windows Update.
What does page layout have to do with it? Say it figures out that its a couple of rows of images? How does it know if those images are Pamela Anderson or a photo gallery of my cat?
And even if it did work, how long is it going to take the porn sites to redesign to look like CNN?
Uh Rav had a Linux version? Can't comment on that because I didn't know they even had a Linux version much that MS discontinued it.
On the Netscape thing, No. Netscape 4 and less is the only proprietary code left, I doubt MS wants that. All Netscape code after that has been duel liscensed under the MPL and the GPL. MS can't simply come along and take it away.
MS on some levels needs Linux to stick around to keep the DOJ off their backs. Don't think that DOJ won't come back when their is an AG that feels like gaining some political points with the IT industry. If they have no one to point to and say "Hey that's our competitor" then that makes the DOJ's job that much easier.
There is plenty of evidence that the places refered to in the Bible exist(ed), archelogical evidence shows this to be true.
10,000 document proves that the Bible isn't a right wing conspiracy.
I apologize that my original post is really just in the context of the person I replied to rather than in context of the article.
I have a big problem with creationists as probably you do (imagine that and I'm a Christian too!) because the Bible is not (and never was intended to be) a science book. The whole point of the creation story isn't to show how God brought about the world, rather to show that he did, and why he did. The creationists put God in a box by trying to add "how" to the story, when the story itself only says that God spoke and it happened, I don't think that precludes evolution simply because God speaks->evolution happens (And all the details there of) -> we get humans. The story doesn't need the detail and couldn't have had it anyway since the authors themselves wouldn't have understood it.
Now I assume you are probably an atheist, that's fine I respect that. But please respect my belief as well that unexplainable things can happen. I've witnessed plenty personally. I'm not certain what "demonstrably false claims" you are refering to but I can imagine a few you might have in mind.
All I can say is the nature of faith is that it can't be explained and I have faith that those things happened, namely a man named Jesus who was God died and came back to life.
The whole idea is to trust that God knows what he's doing. And if there is no god or its all false then in the end I haven't lost anything, and people will still say that I was a good person.
The "Authorized King James Version" published by the Mormon church has omissions and additions made in the last 150 years
The "Bible" that the Jehovah's Witnesses use has significant differences where they took things out or added them.
Neither of these should properly be called Bibles as they were obviously changed to fit with their beliefs.
There are about 6 major translations in use by protestant churches I can guarentee that at the very least those 6 agree with each other verse for verse.
The Catholic Church also has a translation, the only difference between it and the Bibles in use by protestant churches is the Catholic Bible includes several books called the "Apocrapha", these books don't disagree with the rest of the Bible.
Translations today agree because they are not translated from each other or even from past modern translations. All new translations are done from anchient manuscripts and as I pointed out in earlier post there are over 10,000 sources and most Bibles document the small differences between them.
IANABSEBIHFTA (I am not a Bible scholar either but I have friends that are)... maybe that acronym is too long...:)
Anyway while I agree with you there are words that are impossible to translate and lots of metaphors that probably weren't fully understood back when they were written.
However there over 10,000 documents that have been discovered in the ancient world and they all agree with each other, to the point where the only differences are slight word choices and small mistakes (where an author may have left out a word etc.) That's very remarkable, it seems a lot of people took very great care over several thousand years to copy the documents word for word. 10,000 is more than any other ancient work. For instance there are less than 10 documents that refer to the Trojen War in Greece but most historians believe that war happened.
As for the slight differences, there are a number of Bibles (I would say most study Bibles) are published with footnotes containing the differences alternate translations etc, like you describe.
Read my posts in this thread. I have not once said that regexes should be used to parse XML. What I said was:
XML is still a form of text. You can look at it, you can read it, no its not text/plain that's why they call it text/xml! Were it binary then it would be called application/xml
I'll even clarify and say that I personally have never used regexes to parse XML.
Off-topic: I highly doubt that XML is going to become the be-all end all of everything just like Perl isn't the be-all end-all of programming languages, even if it is closer than most:)
*Sigh* you just don't get it do you? People in other parts of the world have different cultures, different laws and different values. Egypt is the kind of place that things like homeland security (for lack of a better term) make sense because there is a real threat to the stability of the country by Islamic fundimentalists.
Ironically I'm the son of a missionary to Africa, the missionary you speak of was right about the children in Africa because when you take a group of people that have nothing and give one of them anything the rest of them are going to start a riot. That's the culture, to give something to someone in Africa, you have to give to everyone. What the missionary did wrong was take that African culture and impose it on the children at the nursery. The children (because of the culture) obviously know there are rewards for good behavior whereas children in Africa don't have that value.
This movie situation is similar, because there are extreme people in Egypt that would see the movie and start a riot because it offends their culture and from their view supports their enemy (ie Israel). These people are more than just bullies in a school yard, they're people that can topple the government and take away everyone's freedom.
The censor in Egypt in this case understands these problems, and rightfully has decided that showing the movie isn't worth it. Its not about the content or the message, its about the perception by certain groups of people.
Alcohol and all you are correct, its just that whether or not XML is better or worse that a "vanilla" text file isn't the point. The point is that you can open an XML file in the text editor of your choice and see that structure, and I bet that a lot of people even if they hadn't seen the format before would understand it at least on some level and be able to edit it. Heck even the mime type for an XML document is (should be) "text/xml"
Try opening a binary file in an editor. Its going to be mostly gibberish, sure you might be able to change some text strings but for the most part you're stuck with what you have.
This thread has gone so far off-topic. My original post way up there somewhere was simply pointing out that Perl has better and more standarized ways to parse XML documents than PHP.
XML is most certainly text. Its not binary! And I didn't say anything about parsing XML with regexes either. There are extensions to Perl that parse XML documents quite nicely.
It would take a whole lot of perl code to achieve the same functionality that can be accomplished in 200 well-written php code.
You obviously don't know Perl, at the very least you don't know about CPAN. How about a decent HTML parser for PHP. XML? How about this: write a program that reads an Excel spreadsheet and uploads its content into a database and let me know how long it takes you in PHP.
PHP sucks because there is no standard way to extend it, and don't mention PEAR as it so poorly documented its almost completely unusable save for a few of the 'modules' that are there.
Rather than implement proper namespaces the developers chose to throw everything in the core language. Thus you get a_function_for_everything() which sure makes it easy for the web monkeys to memorize it or look it up but never how or why something works, and in the end you get nothing more than an unmaintainable mess. What happens when a new feature is needed. Re-write city (Yes that is a rant because I've had live in the shadow of my web-monkey predecessor).
Also what's with mixing data and logic? PHP's whole premise is just plain backwards. Just recently are they trying to bolt on some sort of templating.
Other problems: no access to the web server, difficult to generate web-server response codes. Errors, including full path-names etc are spit out to the user. (great for security).
Its been my experience in dealing with both PHP and Perl that proper, templated, documented code takes about the same amount of time and code. And with all the hacks to work around the above problems with PHP, its just easier and more maintainable to use Perl. (Too bad my employers don't see it that way)
... does anyone really know the original intent of perl?
To manipulate text. Funny since everything is going to a text/XML type of meta format Perl is very well suited to the Web and to system management or for small GUI programs. I think Perl would be a great replacement for say VB.
*Obligatory PHP flame from the Perl guy* of course Perl can do all that and it doesn't need_a_function_for_everything() to accomplish it either. */Obligatory PHP flame from the Perl guy*
PDF is an open format. There are tons of ways to generate a PDF on a unix system.
*Obligatory PHP flame from the Perl Guy * Of course unlike Perl there are no easy/good ways to create one in PHP */Obligatory PHP flame from the Perl Guy*
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Mozilla's mail client is just fine. Great spam filtering, multiple accounts, the ability to turn off everything but plain text, including cookies. Throw in the spell-checker add on and you have a great mail client.
I just don't understand why everyone complains about it so much. Its not hard to use. Its not buggy. What's the big complaint about?
(BTW I do use it and pine both)
I haven't installed 9.1, but with 9 if you choose workstation install, I don't think it installs any servers and if you do server install I don't think it installs a lot of the graphical stuff.
And the advanced install warns you about what servers you installed and gives you the option to turn them off.
Do IE and Mozilla actually run standards based JScript well today?
For the most part, yes. Its definitely much better than it was back in the Netscape 3/4 days. Much of Mozilla's UI is done with Javascript so I think that makes the implementation better than before as bugs in JS could cause bugs in the UI.
IE's Jscript still isn't up to that level, but again its better than it used to be. The DOM is almost identical and that helps. IE 5+ also has implemented "getElementById()" and done away with the old "document.all" style of finding page elements.
There are a few differences. This page, is a short informative look at a few of the major differences and some ways to get around them.
Javascript is not dead if you stick to the DOM and ECMA script standards, most stuff works. As a web developer I use a fair amount of Javascript and it works fine, even without browser detection.
... I know, I work with several of them.
The problem with Javascript is that there are so many crappy programs out there that don't properly utilize the language, resorting to stupid 'Netscape' or 'IE' detection hacks rather than testing for the existance of functions. Then the so called 'web developers' just download this stuff and stick it in. "If it works in IE its good enough for me"
Mozilla 1.4 added a 'read ahead' ability that downloads the links while it is idle. Its under Advanced, Cache (I believe it defaults to on).
I think that Opera also has the capability.
Oh come on! Do you seriously think your grandma can install Office or Windows? Seriously! People call me all the time because they can't figure out how to install stuff, or what choices they need to make if they get the installer to run, or heck even how to get the computer to boot of a disk or CD (in the case of installing an OS).
"Grandma" runs whatever came on her computer when she bought it at Best Buy, give or take a few viruses she opened in Outbreak.
As for your opinion of Open Office, its your opinion, if you like Office, fine, use it. I prefer the other. But quit spreading FUD about how hard it is to install the alternatives, because its not really any different.
So tempting to mod you down like the troll you are but why not bite instead.
If you just go to this little link right here you'll find a very easy to use Office app that you can install in a few clicks on Windows, Solaris or Linux. And not only does it not have to be compiled, it doesn't cost your money or freedom either!
Or perhaps you'd like the entire linux OS, free of licensing, without having to compile a single thing. Here are just a few examples.
Ahh yes the great online documentation where i have to know the name of the function to find anything useful. Typing 'log errors' into the 'online documentation' search directs me to a google search of the entire site that does not produce the page you're refering to. Too bad that PHP doesn't come with easily accessable documentation like most other languages on a Unix system. Perl for instance has its manual divided into clearly marked sections so you can find what you're looking for without having to know Perl at all.
Your biggest complaint is that you are too lazy to read the manual and you expect everything to be done for you. No programming language can help you with this.
If that were true I'd like using PHP as it does do everything for you without anyone having to learn those pesky programming practices like separating presentation from design, or namespaces, or scoping.
As for the error handling, thanks for showing me the document you refered to. However after reading it, its still seems that PHP does not throw a code 500 to the webserver. Even if it did I still stand behind what I said before, as the default implementation of errors is non-standard and exposes things like real pathnames to the outside world.
For all your complaints about Perl, its still far better than PHP because of the namespace and extentablity issues alone. Besides PHP derived its syntax from Perl (they wanted to 'fix' Perl). As for mod_perl, at first it was hard to get into but they've made a ton of improvements, most times if you've used 'strict' and followed good coding practice your CGI will plug right into mod_perl with no changes. mod_perl lets you do cool things with Apache as well.
All of this is IMHO of course. My biggest complaint about PHP is the joke that they pass as "error handling". Yeah great, thanks for exposing all my path names to the outside world if something goes wrong. And sure you can turn it off but then you never know if something went wrong. Here's a hint, how about using the error_log like everyone else, and properly stop parsing and send a code 500 to the webserver??
The problem with your scenerio is that he would still be prosecuted and depending on the circumstances (did he hold a gun to the clerk etc.) he might go to jail, at the very least he'd still have to pay back the money for the medicine as well as pay some kind of fine.
It all goes back to two wrongs don't make a right and the ends don't justify the means.
Somewhat more on-topic. I agree with the parent poster. Copyright infringement is illegal. Committing the an act of infringement by sharing music does not justify the intended end of breaking up an illegal cartel. Besides I highly doubt that such an goal would be met by infrindging the copyright. If anything it makes their music more popular. Someone else posted this and i agree, it isn't about money, its about who controls the distribution of the content. The RIAA is afraid that if artists screw their heads on correctly that they'll figure out that they don't need a big company to put their music in stores anymore.
The way to shut down the illegal cartel is to buy music from independant musicians and encourage others to do the same. Its perfectly legal, they can't sue you if you do that. And even if the RIAA never goes away you can feel better in knowing that you aren't listening to over-produced garbage and that you haven't supported them.
Hahaha! That's great. I'd call it a score 5 troll but the terrorism bit probably goes a bit far. Worth a 4 at least. Too bad you posted anonymously.
BTW After we get Kazaa are we going to label Finland as a rogue nation? After all that Linus guy is from there and every red-blooded American knows that Linux is taking money from all the good corporations.
I'll second what alienw said and go a step further.
Why does everyone complain about OpenOffice? I've used Star/Open Office for years now and I haven't come across a Word or Excel doc that it couldn't open. The only problem I ever had was with PowerPoint but it still opened it just didn't have some of the same clip art.
Contrast that to Word that half the time mangles documents produced with older versions of itself. I've had Word 2000 and XP both completely trash a Word 95 document.
Configuration? How is editing a (usually) documented text file harder than trying to hack the registry? Besides most of the newer distros come with a configuration program built right into your favorite GUI, as well as update tools which IMHO work far better than break your network connections, own your computer type program otherwise known as Windows Update.
What does page layout have to do with it? Say it figures out that its a couple of rows of images? How does it know if those images are Pamela Anderson or a photo gallery of my cat?
And even if it did work, how long is it going to take the porn sites to redesign to look like CNN?
Uh Rav had a Linux version? Can't comment on that because I didn't know they even had a Linux version much that MS discontinued it.
On the Netscape thing, No. Netscape 4 and less is the only proprietary code left, I doubt MS wants that. All Netscape code after that has been duel liscensed under the MPL and the GPL. MS can't simply come along and take it away.
MS on some levels needs Linux to stick around to keep the DOJ off their backs. Don't think that DOJ won't come back when their is an AG that feels like gaining some political points with the IT industry. If they have no one to point to and say "Hey that's our competitor" then that makes the DOJ's job that much easier.
There is plenty of evidence that the places refered to in the Bible exist(ed), archelogical evidence shows this to be true.
10,000 document proves that the Bible isn't a right wing conspiracy.
I apologize that my original post is really just in the context of the person I replied to rather than in context of the article.
I have a big problem with creationists as probably you do (imagine that and I'm a Christian too!) because the Bible is not (and never was intended to be) a science book. The whole point of the creation story isn't to show how God brought about the world, rather to show that he did, and why he did. The creationists put God in a box by trying to add "how" to the story, when the story itself only says that God spoke and it happened, I don't think that precludes evolution simply because God speaks->evolution happens (And all the details there of) -> we get humans. The story doesn't need the detail and couldn't have had it anyway since the authors themselves wouldn't have understood it.
Now I assume you are probably an atheist, that's fine I respect that. But please respect my belief as well that unexplainable things can happen. I've witnessed plenty personally. I'm not certain what "demonstrably false claims" you are refering to but I can imagine a few you might have in mind.
All I can say is the nature of faith is that it can't be explained and I have faith that those things happened, namely a man named Jesus who was God died and came back to life.
The whole idea is to trust that God knows what he's doing. And if there is no god or its all false then in the end I haven't lost anything, and people will still say that I was a good person.
Simply not true.
The "Authorized King James Version" published by the Mormon church has omissions and additions made in the last 150 years
The "Bible" that the Jehovah's Witnesses use has significant differences where they took things out or added them.
Neither of these should properly be called Bibles as they were obviously changed to fit with their beliefs.
There are about 6 major translations in use by protestant churches I can guarentee that at the very least those 6 agree with each other verse for verse.
The Catholic Church also has a translation, the only difference between it and the Bibles in use by protestant churches is the Catholic Bible includes several books called the "Apocrapha", these books don't disagree with the rest of the Bible.
Translations today agree because they are not translated from each other or even from past modern translations. All new translations are done from anchient manuscripts and as I pointed out in earlier post there are over 10,000 sources and most Bibles document the small differences between them.
IANABSEBIHFTA (I am not a Bible scholar either but I have friends that are) ... maybe that acronym is too long ... :)
Anyway while I agree with you there are words that are impossible to translate and lots of metaphors that probably weren't fully understood back when they were written.
However there over 10,000 documents that have been discovered in the ancient world and they all agree with each other, to the point where the only differences are slight word choices and small mistakes (where an author may have left out a word etc.) That's very remarkable, it seems a lot of people took very great care over several thousand years to copy the documents word for word. 10,000 is more than any other ancient work. For instance there are less than 10 documents that refer to the Trojen War in Greece but most historians believe that war happened.
As for the slight differences, there are a number of Bibles (I would say most study Bibles) are published with footnotes containing the differences alternate translations etc, like you describe.
Yeah, but Perl's XML interfaces are far from optimal.
I agree with that, I was only saying they're better than PHP.
What I want is a language foo such that:
foo is to XML as Perl is to regular expressions
That would be cool
I'll even clarify and say that I personally have never used regexes to parse XML.
Off-topic:
I highly doubt that XML is going to become the be-all end all of everything just like Perl isn't the be-all end-all of programming languages, even if it is closer than most
*Sigh* you just don't get it do you? People in other parts of the world have different cultures, different laws and different values. Egypt is the kind of place that things like homeland security (for lack of a better term) make sense because there is a real threat to the stability of the country by Islamic fundimentalists.
Ironically I'm the son of a missionary to Africa, the missionary you speak of was right about the children in Africa because when you take a group of people that have nothing and give one of them anything the rest of them are going to start a riot. That's the culture, to give something to someone in Africa, you have to give to everyone. What the missionary did wrong was take that African culture and impose it on the children at the nursery. The children (because of the culture) obviously know there are rewards for good behavior whereas children in Africa don't have that value.
This movie situation is similar, because there are extreme people in Egypt that would see the movie and start a riot because it offends their culture and from their view supports their enemy (ie Israel). These people are more than just bullies in a school yard, they're people that can topple the government and take away everyone's freedom.
The censor in Egypt in this case understands these problems, and rightfully has decided that showing the movie isn't worth it. Its not about the content or the message, its about the perception by certain groups of people.
Alcohol and all you are correct, its just that whether or not XML is better or worse that a "vanilla" text file isn't the point. The point is that you can open an XML file in the text editor of your choice and see that structure, and I bet that a lot of people even if they hadn't seen the format before would understand it at least on some level and be able to edit it. Heck even the mime type for an XML document is (should be) "text/xml"
Try opening a binary file in an editor. Its going to be mostly gibberish, sure you might be able to change some text strings but for the most part you're stuck with what you have.
This thread has gone so far off-topic. My original post way up there somewhere was simply pointing out that Perl has better and more standarized ways to parse XML documents than PHP.
XML is most certainly text. Its not binary! And I didn't say anything about parsing XML with regexes either. There are extensions to Perl that parse XML documents quite nicely.
It would take a whole lot of perl code to achieve the same functionality that can be accomplished in 200 well-written php code.
You obviously don't know Perl, at the very least you don't know about CPAN. How about a decent HTML parser for PHP. XML? How about this: write a program that reads an Excel spreadsheet and uploads its content into a database and let me know how long it takes you in PHP.
PHP sucks because there is no standard way to extend it, and don't mention PEAR as it so poorly documented its almost completely unusable save for a few of the 'modules' that are there.
Rather than implement proper namespaces the developers chose to throw everything in the core language. Thus you get a_function_for_everything() which sure makes it easy for the web monkeys to memorize it or look it up but never how or why something works, and in the end you get nothing more than an unmaintainable mess. What happens when a new feature is needed. Re-write city (Yes that is a rant because I've had live in the shadow of my web-monkey predecessor).
Also what's with mixing data and logic? PHP's whole premise is just plain backwards. Just recently are they trying to bolt on some sort of templating.
Other problems: no access to the web server, difficult to generate web-server response codes. Errors, including full path-names etc are spit out to the user. (great for security).
Its been my experience in dealing with both PHP and Perl that proper, templated, documented code takes about the same amount of time and code. And with all the hacks to work around the above problems with PHP, its just easier and more maintainable to use Perl. (Too bad my employers don't see it that way)
... does anyone really know the original intent of perl?
To manipulate text. Funny since everything is going to a text/XML type of meta format Perl is very well suited to the Web and to system management or for small GUI programs. I think Perl would be a great replacement for say VB.
*Obligatory PHP flame from the Perl guy*
of course Perl can do all that and it doesn't need_a_function_for_everything() to accomplish it either.
*/Obligatory PHP flame from the Perl guy*
PDF is an open format. There are tons of ways to generate a PDF on a unix system.
*Obligatory PHP flame from the Perl Guy *
Of course unlike Perl there are no easy/good ways to create one in PHP
*/Obligatory PHP flame from the Perl Guy*