totally unreadable

Umm .. totally wrong, from the version that I looked at, which was the version packaged with 5.8.7. The indentation is fine, the variable names are reasonable, there are a few comments. An example of or two of the 'unreadable' code would have helped your rant.

too big compared to what it does

Too big? The version I looked at was 294 lines, broken down into about 75 lines of POD and the remaining code, consisting of six subroutines, and it does a fair bit -- will you be uploading a vastly shorter, 100% backward-compatible version next week?

contains hidden "logic" that is NOT documented

I didn't see that from my quick scan of the source code -- again, an example or two that supported your claim would have helped here. And (as has already been mentioned) I'm sure the Perl5 Porters would happily accept patches and additional tests if appropriate.

Yes, it's a simple module, but it was written to to do one thing, and one thing well. If it's code that's tried and true, don't sweat it that the code style is a little old. As Edith Bunker once said, "If it's not broken, don't fix it." Words to live by.

Update: Fixed two minor typos.