My suggestion is that you if you are concerned about the proliferation of semi-useful modules on CPAN, look hard at all the alternatives to your own module that you could contribute to before starting yet-another.

I get the sense that many modules are maintained by primarily one person who would be glad to have help, and we would all benefit by having fewer high quality modules to wade through.

If you remain confident your module is filling a unique niche, I think the module-authors@perl.org mailing list is the appropriate place to ask about potential names.

Mark

Like I said, I hadn't seen DBIx::XHTML_Table before. It was the 96th result returned. Ten pages. I looked for something that filled the need I had, but couldn't find it. I'm not gonna look at every module on CPAN before writing my own. Here is the AoA interface to DBIx::XHTML_Table:

my $rows = [
        [ qw(Head1 Head2 Head3) ],
        [ qw(foo bar baz)       ],
        [ qw(one two three)     ],
        [ qw(un deux trois)     ]
  ];

  my $table = DBIx::XHTML_Table->new($rows);
[download]

It's almost identical to the first way of arranging data in my module, but quite different than the other two. The second two are the ones I consider neat. You supply an array and the number of columns or rows that you want and it builds the table for you.

As to contacting module authors, one of the main rules of module writing is "don't change the interface." That makes it rather difficult to contribute to an out of alpha/beta module. I could send my code, but its interface is entirely diferent, so it wouldn't do much good to try to incorporate it.

elusion : http://matt.diephouse.com

While your second two methods for creating tables are neat, i rarely need such tools. Most of my work involves getting results from a database ... the rows and columns are already determined. The only reason why i added the AoA feature was because it was too trivial to not add it. Besides, creating the table by supplying an array and some number (say, 4) is a piece of cake. ;) .o0(maybe i should add this to the CookBook)

use strict;
use warnings;
use DBIx::XHTML_Table;

my @avengers = ( 'Iron Man', 'Black Panther', 'Thor',
   'Black Widow', 'Mockingbird', 'Captain America',
   'Quicksilver', 'Vision', 'Falcon',
   'Scarlet Witch', 'Wasp', 'Hawkeye',
   'Hercules', 'Yellowjacket',
);

my $n = 4;
my $rows = [map[@avengers[$_..$_+$n-1]], range(0,$#avengers,$n)];
my $headers = [map "row$_",1..$n];

print DBIx::XHTML_Table->new($rows,$headers)->output;

# if Python can do this, so can Perl!
sub range {grep !($_%$_[2]-$_[0]),$_[0]..$_[1]}
[download]

However, your module has this encapsulated already, so i just re-invented a wheel. ;) And i will admit that your module does one important thing that mine does not - allow the user to place the headers in a column, and not just in the top row. This is something that i plan to fix this summer. I'll use the printer terms 'landscape' and 'portrait' to describe the two different styles.

As for why my module turned up so low at search.cpan.org, well i guess it's because my module is named XHTML, not merely HTML. Shame that it doesn't get a higher hit rating ... but if you search for xhtml table, it is the first hit. Kobe, however, lists my module quite a bit higher ... html table. Thanks Randy. :)

Honestly, i see no reason why your module should not be on CPAN. I like the autogeneration feature ... maybe the name HTML::Table::Generate would be a good name for it. There really are a lot of HTML Table modules on CPAN ... i guess it's a popular problem to solve. ;)

UPDATE: changed 3 arg to range from $n - 1 to $n. My original was producing duplicate values. (chalk it up to late-nite posting) Thanks jryan. :)

UPDATE2: changed internals of range. It did not work "if the starting point is not a multiple of the increment" (quote from merlyn). Whereas the fuction works just fine for this example, it won't for other applications. The fix? Simply subtract the starting point from the result of the modulus. Better yet, just use the code i posted at emulate Python's range function.

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

Hello, I don't fault you not paging through every last CPAN result. I think search system there could be improved as well. I'm also frustrated it doesn't some better kind of "rating/comment" system, or some other way to get a clue about which modules people are generally finding useful.

I was just surprised that once the module had been brought to your attention, you didn't seem to be giving it much consideration. Cleary, from your post directly above, you have done that.

I'm really not supposed to having many modules that approach the same problem space the same way. While I think there are many cases where collaboration versus competition would be beneficial, as much as much as anything the problem lies the ability to usefully manage all the information we have about all the available options. To address that, I think we really need some enhancements to CPAN websites, or some better external resources to supplement them.

Mark