Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] The Target Audience

[Dave C. <da...@da...>]

On Sun, Jan 20, 2002 at 04:02:31AM +1100, iain truskett (ic...@eh...) wrote:
> * Dave Cross (da...@da...) [20 Jan 2002 03:01]:
> 
> [...]
> > I honestly can't tell you what problems I had other than to say I
> > couldn't get ms-mail to work. I followed the instructions as I
> > understood them, meaning, from a layman's point of view.
> 
> I suspect he had trouble with the Mail::Mailer part. Not a problem for
> the nms stuff. Either that, or he installed it under Windows (where
> taint mode can prove amusing).

Yeah. That's what I thought. I asked him that very question, but he didn't
seem to understand.
 
> Out of interest, is there a simple way to download modules that a
> Makefile.PL says one should have? e.g.
> 
>   perl Makefile.PL
>   make modules
>   make
>   make test
>   make install
> 
> Or could just be subsumed into the 'make' part.

CPAN.pm will do that for you, so there's probably no good reason why 
ExtUtils::MakeMaker doesn't do it as well. Except, how _would_ you 
donwload and install modules from within a "make" session - you'd probably
use CPAN.pm - so why not just use that in the first place.

I think this is all academic anyway as installing modules is beyond most
of our target audience.

> I must admit I still have a vague philosophical objection to the
> project in that "why are laymen installing CGIs?" and "why don't they
> just learn what the errors actually mean?". He'd have been up the creek
> if none of the scripts he downloaded had worked.

Well this is, of course, true. Did you see the bit where he said he was tired
of paying "so-called experts" $50/hr to do the installations.

But we're going to have to just accept that Ron's attitude is very typical
of the kinds of people who will be using our scripts. We should be aiming to
make installation easier - not complain that they aren't using better
qualified people to do the installation.

The end user's think that they are quite capable of installing something
complex like Microsoft office, therefore they _must_ be capable of installing
a simple guest book script on their web site.

> Then again, I still worry about articles and so on that mention the 'CGI
> programming language'.

Heh! You and me both :)

Dave...

-- 

  Don't dream it... be it