=head1 Proposal

I<Mastering Perl> fills in the gaps between I<Programming Perl> and
I<Advanced Perl Programming>. The former is a definitive reference to
Perl and outside the context of any problem. The latter takes all the
acculumated Perl wisdom and applies selected parts it to specific
problems. I<Mastering Perl> teaches the concepts Perl programmers should
know, but left out of I<Learning Perl> and I<Intermediate Perl>. 

=head2 What will this book be good for?

This book continues the Perl education started in I<Learning Perl> and 
I<Intermediate Perl>. Each of those thin books introduced the topics
and gave the reader enough information to start using those parts of
Perl. I<Mastering Perl> extends some of those subjects while dicussing
the wisdom of their proper use, and introduces the subjects left out
of those books. Additionally, I<Mastering Perl> covers the subjects
that the latest edition of I<Advanced Perl Programming> discarded from
the first edition.

=head2 The market for the book.

I expect that the market for I<Mastering Perl> will be about the same as
I<Programming Perl>. I'd like to include a foreword from Randal
Schwartz, the name that people trust when it comes to Perl, for a bit of
a sales boost.

=head2 The outline

=head3 	Introduction

I group subjects into major sections that unify their chapters. Besides
the particular topics that each chapter illustrates and explains, each
section imparts a particular section of Perl wisdom

=head3 Thinking in Perl

The first section covers the Perl mindset and how that affects the
mastery of Perl. Learn how Perl tackles problems and use that to your
advantage instead of wrestling with it.

	Perl Context
		strings and numbers
		scalar and list
		void, array, and scalar
	The Four programming models in Perl
		Functional
		Procedural / Imperative
		Logic
		Descriptive
			Perl data structures
	Dealing with Pod

=head3 Doing More with Less

This section shows how a little Perl knowledge can save a lot of code,
without making the code harder to read. Perl is an extremely flexible
language that allows you to take a higher view of a problem. With a
little more Perl skill and a few patterns to keep in mind, a lot of code
that you find hard to extend can turn into a little code that's a snap to
extend.

	Dynamic method calls
	Dispatch tables
	Closures
	Tied Variables
	Advanced Perl Regular Expression
	Mastering array operations
		splice

=head3 Robust Perl Programs

You may have only written programs to do one thing and to do it just for
you, but with a little more work your Perl programs can run on just 
about any platform so your users don't have to touch your code to apply
it to other tasks.

	Portable Perl
		File::Spec
	Data persistence
		pack
		Data::Dumper, YAML
		Storable
		DBI
	Input and Output
	Configuration / Options / Environment
	Logging
	Interprocess communication
	Hooking into other languages
		Inline::C

=head3 Maintaining Perl

We didn't write every Perl program that we have to maintain, and we didn't
get to choose how they were written. This section goes over wrangling 
the Perl code you get from others as well as some of the dark corners
encountered in difficult code.

	Cleansing Perl Code
		perltidy
		refactoring
	Dark Corners and Dead Ends
		Symbol Tables and Globs
		Source Filters
	Automating tests and checks
	Handling Errors

=head3 Tuning Perl

What's happening inside my Perl program? Why does it slow down,
use more memory, or do anything that it does?

	What happens when a Perl script "runs"?
	Benchmarking
	The perl debugger
		Customized debuggers
	Memory use
	Profiling
	Optimizing
	Error Handling

=head2 Schedule

I intend to complete the writing portion of the process by the end of
2006. This is longer than the times I've used to update I<Learning Perl>
and I<Intermediate Perl>, but this is going to be all new writing and, as
far as I can tell, a different sort of Perl book.

I propose this tentative schedule. I might be able to work faster, but 
I can't make promises.

=over 4

=item * Two chapters: February 15, 2006

=item * Half chapters: July 1, 2006

=item * All chapters: November 15, 2006

=back

=head2 Advance payments

I do not want an advance payment.

=head2 My writing sample

I co-authored "Learning Perl, 4th Edition" and "Intermediate Perl" and
have written several articles for the O'Reilly Network, The Perl Journal,
and The Perl Review.  A full list of previous publications is on my web
page: http://www.pair.com/comdog/

=head2 Tools

I'll use plain text POD. I used POD for I<Learning Perl> and
I<Intermediate Perl>. I'm familiar with O'Reilly's pseudo-pod extensions
and have already developed a set of tools to work with them.

=head2 Who I am

brian d foy has been an instructor for Stonehenge Consulting Services
since 1998, a Perl user since he was a physics graduate student, and a
die-hard Mac user since he first owned a computer. He founded the first
Perl user group, the New York Perl Mongers, as well as the Perl advocacy
nonprofit Perl Mongers, Inc., which helped form more than 200 Perl user
groups across the globe. He maintains the perlfaq portions of the core
Perl documentation, several modules on CPAN, and some stand-alone
scripts. He's the publisher of The Perl Review, a magazine devoted to
Perl, and is a frequent speaker at conferences including the Perl
Conference, Perl University, MarcusEvans BioInformatics '02, and YAPC.
His writings on Perl appear in The O'Reilly Network, The Perl Journal,
Dr. Dobbs, and The Perl Review, on use.perl.org, and in several Perl
usenet groups.

=cut