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

[iain t. <ic...@eh...>]

* Dave Cross (da...@da...) [21 Jan 2002 04:34]:
> iain truskett (ic...@eh...) wrote:
[...]
> > 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.

Half the problem is determining what problem one has. =(

> > Out of interest, is there a simple way to download modules that a
> > Makefile.PL says one should have? e.g.
[...]
> 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.

CPAN will do it if you're installing using CPAN. Although I suppose one
could tell make to do some 'perl -MCPAN -e"install Acme::Buffy"' calls.

But then the user would have to configure CPAN.pm. Not useful. Dern it.

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

Indeed.

> > I must admit I still have a vague philosophical objection to the
> > project in that "why are laymen installing CGIs?"
[...]
> 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.

We need better professionals. $50/hr - that's a nice rate (taking
currency conversion into account). I didn't know I Could get away with
charging that =)

> 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.

Yeah, I know. I'm more complaining "why don't they try to become better
qualified people". There's so many things that can do wrong when
installing Perl programs as CGIs, and half of them haven't anything to
do with the fact that they're Perl.

If one hangs out on #perl and #apache on openprojects for a relatively
short time, you tend to see the same questions being asked (typically
"why doesn't my CGI work?") and they get answered in what appears to be
a 'by the book' approach dealing with Apache configuration, program #!,
file permissions and so on.

Perhaps a generic 'troubleshooting' file should be included.

> 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.

In an ideal world, it would be. People wouldn't have to guess where Perl
was installed, Apache would work more things out, etc. etc.

It's just time consuming and unsexy working on making such things
easier, so the people with the best installers get paid for to write
them =) That's my impression at least.


cheers,
-- 
iain.                                          <http://eh.org/~koschei/>