Support & Resources

! ! ! Help ! ! !

I'm confused. Now what do I do?

Easy now; climb down off that ledge. We have lots of resources to help you...

First, start with the online documentation, which you can find under the Help menu in MacPerl. Or, launch Shuck (the application with the ear-of-corn icon). Shuck is MacPerl's Perl documentation reader.

OK, Then what?

Well, maybe you want to buy a book. Or read some articles about Perl.

Many people have created MacPerl FAQs and primers and there are many other web pages devoted to MacPerl and Perl. One or more of these may be of help to you.

Be sure to join one or more of the MacPerl mailing lists. We have the general list, for general discussion, as well as special topical lists which cover modules, toolbox, web-cgi programming, and other areas.

If you still need help, you may want to consider consulting an expert.

Finally, once you have MacPerl, you may find that you need some additional supporting software; take a look at our list of Editors, Databases, and Web Servers.

Books

Prime Time Freeware has published MacPerl: Power and Ease, by MacPerl experts Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor. In addition, there are several excellent books on Perl that you may want to have on your shelf. Be sure to take a look at:

Learning Perl, 2nd Ed.
Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Christiansen
O'Reilly, 1997, ISBN 1-56592-284-0
Programming Perl, 2nd Ed.
Larry Wall, et al O'Reilly, 1996, ISBN 1-56592-149-6
The Perl Cookbook
Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington O'Reilly, 1998, ISBN 1-56592-243-3
Advanced Perl Programming
Sriram Srinivasan
O'Reilly, 1996, ISBN 1-56592-220-4

Check the "computer books" section of your local technical bookstore for more titles. Or check out Camel Critiques, a book review page by Tom Christiansen.

Periodicals and articles

As we hear about MacPerl articles, we'll post them on our Press Coverage pages. In addition, there are two journals (one in print and one online) which are specifically devoted to Perl (and which occasionally contain mention of MacPerl).

The Perl Journal

As you find yourself becoming more involved with Perl, you may want to subscribe to The Perl Journal. Use perl-journal-subscriptions@perl.com for email subscriptions; physical mail subscriptions go to:

The Perl Journal
P.O. Box 54
Boston, MA 02101 USA

PerlMonth

On the World Wide Web, check out PerlMonth, the new Perl-specific webzine. And look for Script Different, the monthly column devoted to macPerl!

perl.com

Short articles and news about Perl are posted frequently on the Perl web site at perl.com.

Primers, FAQs, Archives etc.

Installation and Overview (Vicki Brown and Chris Nandor)
MacPerl FAQ (version 2.6, under construction and updated)
MacPerl Mailing List Archive (Nathaniel Irons)
Note: The MacPerl archives now have indexing by date and thread, searching by keywords and phrases, and even a Sherlock plugin!
MacPerl Module Porters (Chris Nandor)
MacPerl Primer (Sandra Silcot)
MacPerl Q&A (Matthias Neeracher)

Do you have an answer to share or wisdom to impart, not yet found elsewhere? Perhaps you've got a short code snippet that others might benefit from seeing? The MacPerl FAQ-O-Matic may be for you:

The MacPerl FAQ-O-Matic

Other Web pages

afcoPages (Alan Fry)
Charles Cave's MacPerl Page (Charles Cave)
MacJPerl (Chuck Houpt, Michiko Nozu)
MacPerl (Paul Schinder)
MacPerl Homepage (Matthias Neeracher)
MacPerl Island (Shin-Ichi Yoshimoto)
MacPerl Scripts (WebCentrix)
Perl Butler Module Home Page (Peter Chen)
Pudge's Pad: MacPerl (Chris Nandor)
The MacPerl Pages (Vicki Brown, Rich Morin)