Re: perl 6 requirements

OK.  I've got a draft requirements document together.  I was going to
post it, but it's 700 lines long, so instead I've put it up at
http://infotrope.net/opensource/software/perl6/ in a variety of formats
(txt, HTML, ps, pdf, docbook source).

This is based on Adam Turoff's p5p meeting notes, a set of notes that
Garrett Goebel sent me, and my own reading of the bootstrap list.  It
does not yet incorporate Ed Horos' "Perl 5 sucks" material, as he seems
to be busy changing jobs right now :)  However, I think we may find that
a lot of his material is already covered in this document.

You will see that each item is listed as a PROBLEM with Perl 5, followed 
by a DISCUSSION.  From that I have distilled a REQUIREMENT in such a way 
that if we were to just take all the REQUIREMENTs from this document they
would stand on their own.  Some points also have SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS,
however the primary aim of this document is *not* to settle on solutions
-- they're included only as extra information for those whose job it
will be to implement these requirements.

I have also not given much attention to the priority of each
requirement.  It may turn out that some of these items are completely
or nearly irrelevant.  I'd quite like to make the REQUIREMENT statements
use MUST, SHOULD, and MAY as per RFC 2119, and I'd quite like some
discussion to occur wrt which terms should be used for which
requirements.  The other thing that I may need help with is the
DISCUSSION points; most are based on my less-than-complete understanding 
of the issues, so I can't guarantee that they address all the necessary 
points of discussion.

I would hope that we could spend about a week arguin^Wdiscussing this
document, by which stage we may have a reasonable idea of what we want
Perl 6 to look like.  At that point we can hand off the requirements
document to the people who'll be doing the design work.

If you want to discuss this in email either on-list or privately, can I 
please request that you either:

1) quote a section of the ASCII text version of the document, in normal
email quoting style, or

2) refer to an item by section number and item number, eg "In item
3.3/2..."

Thanks,

K.


-- 
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