Intent to Give to Others (ITGTO?): libnewt-perl

[Anthony Fok <foka@ualberta.ca>]

Hello,

I would like to announce my intent to give the package "libnewt-perl"
to whomever is interested in maintaining it.
I am no longer qualified, for the following reasons:

  * libnewt-perl is still based on newt-0.30, but it seems upstream
    had not updated it to use with the current newt-0.50.
    See its home page at: http://www.msg.com.mx/Newt/
  * I know too little Perl to update it myself.
  * I don't use libnewt-perl myself.
  * Lack of time.

Note that I have not contacted libnewt-perl (Newt-1.08) upstream author
Alejandro Escalante Medina <amedina@msg.com.mx>.

There is another module on CPAN called Term::Newt (Term-Newt-0.01) by
David Sully.  It seems to be based on newt-0.40.  There has been no further
updates to the copy on CPAN.

There are currently 4 normal bugs filed against libnewt-perl, including
out-of-sync documentation (still 0.30-based while libnewt-perl sort of works
with 0.50), problem with LANG env, etc.

Another thought is that wrappers for Python and Tcl are already included in
the nicely packaged newt_0.50-7 maintained by Enrique Zanardi.  I wonder if
a Perl wrapper could be included to the list?  Is there such a wrapper
for Perl included upstream?  Or is there any intention for newt's upstream
authors to do so?

Hmm... I just noticed another thing: in debian/control, the package
description says:

	It is very usable because it has complete support for all widgets
	found in newt 0.50, and provides a nice abstraction over the C
	interface.

I was probably delirious when I changed "newt 0.30" to "newt 0.50"
in the description.  :-)

Another interesting development is gNewt found on

	http://gnewt.sourceforge.net/

and recently, the author had added a perl module called "whiperl"...
Hmm...  :-)  After tinkering with Makefile.in (needed to add @CFLAGS@
and @CPPFLAGS@ to CFLAGS), it seems to work.  Is that the way to go?  I
don't know.

Since I can't look into this further myself, I sincerely hope someone could
volunteer and help provide a good solution to a up-to-date Newt module for
Perl.

Many thanks,

Anthony

-- 
Anthony Fok Tung-Ling                Civil and Environmental Engineering
foka@ualberta.ca, foka@debian.org    University of Alberta, Canada
Come visit Our Lady of Victory Camp -- http://www.olvc.ab.ca/