in reply to Re: How to Easily Check for Available CPAN Modules when Upgrading ActiveState Perl
in thread How to Easily Check for Available CPAN Modules when Upgrading ActiveState Perl

Thanks for those suggestions..

Strawberry looks like it's an interesting option.. but I'll have to (re-)learn all the old POD-style docs and their navigation -- I've been spoilt with ActiveState's HTML/framed doc system that includes help for the installation as well as the actual perl interpreter and modules, etc.

Seems like I have a lot more to study... as usual..

  • Comment on Re^2: How to Easily Check for Available CPAN Modules when Upgrading ActiveState Perl

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: How to Easily Check for Available CPAN Modules when Upgrading ActiveState Perl
by dasgar (Priest) on Jul 31, 2012 at 07:12 UTC

    I know exactly what you're talking about. I myself started out on ActiveState Perl. Like you, I really liked the web-based documentation and never really got into using the line-command perldoc utility.

    If that's what's holding you back from making the switch from ActiveState to Strawberry, then here's a few alternatives that might help out.

    First, I've gotten more familiar with using http://www.perl.org/docs.html for looking things up. That combined with CPAN, it is somewhat similar to ActiveState's web-based documentation system, but not as convenient.

    Secondly, I recently found Pod::POM::Web. According to the Acknowledgements section of the documentation, the module was "deeply inspired" by "the structure of HTML Perl documentation released with ActivePerl". I'd recommend checking it out.

[reply]

      mkdir out_html

      perl -MPod::Simple::HTMLBatch -e Pod::Simple::HTMLBatch::go @INC out_html

      start out_html/index.html

[reply]

        Finally had time to check out Pod::Simple::HTMLBatch. If you're only wanting to access documentation for installed modules, I guess it can considered ok. However, I personally don't feel like it's a good replacement for the ActiveState web-based documentation that the OP was "spoilt" with using. The ActiveState documentation includes other perldoc information like the FAQs, perlfunc, pragmas, etc.

        The module that I had suggested, Pod::POM::Web, includes all of those things that Pod::Simple::HTMLBatch does seem to cover. Also, Pod::POM::Web has a better interface and layout in my opinion.

        Just wanted to share a comparison of the two modules for the benefit of others.

[reply]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom