David Mitchell has submitted a grant proposal, which if accepted would make use of a portion of the funding generously provided to TPF by "Booking.com":http://www.booking.com/. Before the Board votes on this proposal we would like to get feedback and endorsements from the Perl community. Please leave feedback in the comments or send email with your comments to karen at perlfoundation.org. Grant Title: Fixing perl5 core bugs Name: David Mitchell **Amount

For this quarter TPF has three grant proposals that were not funded in 2009Q3 round and that will be discussed and voted again in this round, and four new grant proposals: "Creating a ctypes-Like Interface for Perl to External Subroutines":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2009/08/2009q3_grant_proposal_creating.html by Shlomi Fish "Enhancing CPANHQ":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2009/08/2009q3_grant_proposal_enhancin.html by Shlomi Fish "perl core memory improvements":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2010/02/2010q1_grant_proposal_perl_cor.html by Jim Cromie "Enhancing Perl 6 Pattern Matching":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2010/02/2010_grant_proposal_enhancing.html by Morris M. Siegel "Perl Compiler":http://news.perlfoundation.org/2010/02/2010_grant_proposal_perl_compi.html by Reini urban "CPAN

perl core memory improvements Name: Jim Cromie Email: Amount Requested: How much is your project worth? $3000 Synopsis Memory allocation enhancements in core Perl's variable namespace model is very flexible, users can: create vars, in any package, or in my scope, by naming them; give them complex values: my $foo share/assign/shallow-copy them: $main::bar $foo; crosslink or self ref them: $a $a other hairy stuff This

Enhancing Perl 6 Pattern Matching with Ideas from Snobol4 and Other Sources Name: Morris M. Siegel, Ph.D. Email: Amount Requested: $3000 The substance of my proposed alternative pattern-matching specification has already been essentially worked out as a self-funded research project, as it were. I felt this project was of such importance that it was worthwhile giving myself a sort of sabbatical to develop it. It has taken rather longer than

Improve Dist::Zilla's Tests, Documentation, and Structure Name: Ricardo Signes Email: Amount Requested: $2000 Synopsis Dist::Zilla is a tool that helps Perl programmers build distributions for the CPAN. It eliminates boilerplate, handles packaging, interfaces with changelogs and version control, improves prerequisite management, and generally makes it easier to be a CPAN author. This grant will fund work to make it easier for new users to adopt Dist::Zilla and for Dist::Zilla itself

CPAN reviews Name: Alexandr Ciornii Email: Amount Requested: $1200 Synopsis Many CPAN modules have good documentation, many have bad documentation. But there is no such thing as enough documentation. There are many good reviews, examples, descriptions outside CPAN. I propose to collect them and cataloguize. I want to make a site with links to reviews of CPAN modules. In general this site should be community-moderated, community-edited and allow users adding

Perl Compiler Name: Reini urban Email: Duration: Until March 2011 Amount Requested: $1000 Synopsis Fix most of the remaining perl compiler, i.e. B::C, B::CC, B::Bytecode bugs. Improve documentation a bit. Maintain the planned compiler.perl.org site. Benefits to the Perl Community A working compiler. Faster startup time. Optionally faster run-time if the B::CC optimizations work out as expected. parrot? I've worked with them. I gave up. Better a half-ass perl5 compiler

NOTE: **perl.org Request Tracker was down for about a week As this happened in the last days of the call for grants period we are extending it till the end of the week The Perl Foundation is looking at giving some grants ranging from $500 to $3000 in February/March 2010. In the past, we've supported Adam Kennedy's PPI, Strawberry Perl and Perl on a Stick, Nicholas Clark's work on Perl

The dates for "YAPC::NA 2010":http://yapc2010.com/ were announced recently. The conference will be the week of June 20th 2010 at Knowlton Hall on the Campus of the Ohio State University. The primary conference days will be June 21st, 22nd, 23rd, but if history tells us anything, there will be events, classes, and hackathons spread out for days before and after the official conference. #perl-conference-yapc

I am pleased to announce that TPF will be represented for the first time this year at "CeBIT":http://www.cebit.de/homepage_e. The conference is taking place between the 2nd and 6th of March in Hannover, Germany. The events team is still looking for more volunteers to staff the booth. If you want to help out you'll find information on the "events mailing list":http://www.mail-archive.com/events@lists.perlfoundation.org/ and the "events wiki":http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?events.

Over the past few weeks discussions have been taking place on our Marketing list regarding different ways to promote Perl. One idea we are running with is promoting Perl at technical conferences where the main focus isn't Perl. Gabor has "announced":http://szabgab.com/blog/2009/12/1260171050.html that there will be a Perl booth at "FOSDEM":http://www.fosdem.org/2010/ in February next year. This is, hopefully, the first of many conferences that are targeted. To help co-ordinate our efforts

Eric Wilhelm has finished his grant "improving learn.perl.org":http://news.perlfoundation.org/mt/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=18&tag=learn.perl.org&limit=20". He has written six tutorials from "Getting Started with Perl" to "Your First GUI Desktop Application". The six tutorials are "Getting Started with Perl":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/getting_started/ "Control, Structures, Scoping, and Subroutines":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/csss/ "Using and Creating Modules":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/modules/ "An Introduction to Objects":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/objects/ "Perl/CPAN Configuration Howto":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/configuration/ "Your First GUI Desktop Application":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/wxperl/ The tutorials are currently hosted "http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com, but if Eric finds a better permanent home for them, he

Follows the update from Vadim on his grant: I've implemented 'call' method for interpreter object, which takes already parsed parameters and passes them to tcl/tk interpreter. It is similar to 'eval' method, but it should be faster, and also safer to use, because there will be no need to protect/escape special characters before calls. Also, widget calls to tcl/tk library are based on this method. Also, 'tk' widgets could be

Eric Roode sent the following update: bq. The status is basically that the writing is taking much, much longer than I had expected. I had thought I'd be able to document a couple classes per hour; instead, it's taking me a few hours per class. I don't really know what to do to speed up the process, so I am just continuing to plug along. At the rate I'm going,

Given my high amount of work at the moment and the big number of grants not finished I decided to skip the fourth call for grants for 2009. I am sorry for any inconvenience.

As you might have seen already, www.perl.org got a new look thanks to Foxtons and Leo Lapworth, Stephen Morgan and Cameron Richmond.

Over the last two weeks, Eric has done a lot of things... bq. I've added the "CPAN and Perl Configuration Howto" to the site. Feedback so far has been good. I'm waiting to hear if there are stumbling points or if it leaves any important questions unanswered. bq. "http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/configuration/":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/configuration/ bq. The "Control, Structures, Scoping and Subroutines" tutorial is now complete. bq. "http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/csss/":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com/tutorials/csss/ bq. I've finished writing the tutorials and am

The "Frozen Perl 2010":http://www.frozen-perl.org/mpw2010/ workshop is scheduled for Saturday, February 6th at the University of Minnesota's McNamara Alumni Center in Minneapolis, MN. The organizers just put out their "call for speakers":http://www.frozen-perl.org/mpw2010/cfs.html a day or so ago. If you have no fear of freezing temperatures and want to attend or speak at a great Perl workshop, check it out. Also, the are still "looking for sponsors":http://www.frozen-perl.org/mpw2010/sponsorship.html if you'd like to help

It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce, on behalf of Ricardo Signes, that the TPF-funded work on Pod::Elemental and Pod::Weaver is complete! Here's his final report: Just a few days after predicting that the months-old grant was half done, it became quite clear that the first half was much, much more difficult than the second. The initial grant proposal listed the following targets: clearly defined and

Eric sent me this update: bq. I've sent a handful of changes to Robert and have been asked not to change the page style as apparently there's some other initiative going on. bq. The perl-org-patches list has generated some conflicting changes for the new /tutorials/ page as well as the index.html and I'm trying to resolve that content. The "learnperl.scratchcomputing.com":http://learnperl.scratchcomputing.com front page has a sketch of where I'm wanting the