Re: RFS: pdfmerge
>From tv_AT_beamnet_de,
>Which is bad, because I'm sure the package will raise the "why does
>every badly written, trivial script need to be included in Debian?"
Do you know how many people use this "trivial script"? You'll be surprise
to know that at least 10 people are downloading it from a Fedora
repository and SF.net everyday.
And I've had about over 100 people requesting to me personnally the source
code for this trivial stuff in less than 2 months release. I had to make
the sourcecode available so that ppl stop bugging me!
It is small things that make up big things. :-p This small script has
entered several big projects, both GPL and non-GPL. Besides like Philipp
said, it's another way of doing things.
>question.
>Just two things:
>- picking two random pdf files, I don't see the difference between
> using the script (why does it need autotools for a trivial perl
> script?) and using
> gs -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=merged.pdf *.pdf -c quit
> what is the difference?
There are no differences. You're right! But how many people knew what
you've just wrote? Of course I'm in a mentor's list and here, most people
would say "I knew it... pfff so trivial". But I can assure you that many
common/layman people do not know this and prefer to download my script and
achieve their results fast rather than reading the manpage of ghostview.
Manu people would love to do an apt-get install pdfmerge and get the job
done. When you're at the expert level, you prefer to hack but when you're
a starter and you need results immediately you don't really want to mess
around and spend your late nights over the manpages.
Why do we want those scripts in?
Well because they're useful and they save time. And they can be part of
bigger projects. People can learn from small scripts and create grander
ones. Who wants to learn from source codes which contain millions of
lines besides computer freaks?
I would prefer learning from small codes progressively and then moving on
to bigger and bigger ones.
Even Linux was built out of some small programs. Linux was never borned
big. It was a small project by a university student.:-p That's the beauty
of it. We contribute small things to make big things.
I guess most people would agree w/ this.
With kind regards,
Didier.
---
PhD student.
Singapore Synchrotron Light Source (SSLS)
5 Research Link,
Singapore 117603
Email: slsbdfc at nus dot edu dot sg /
didierbe at sps dot nus dot edu dot sg
Web: http://ssls.nus.edu.sg
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