[Perl-pad-users] PerlPad 0.2 released

[Thilo P. <thi...@we...>]

Hi all,

for those of you interested in PerlPad, I have just released the new 
version 0.2.
(For those who dont know it: It is a Mac OS X application that provides 
System Services to evaluate Perl snippets from other applications).

It has a number of improvements (see release notes below for details) 
and is available on SourceForge:

http://perl-pad.sourceforge.net/

PerlPad also has its own mailing list now to which you can post 
questions, problems, suggestions (and praise ?):

http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/perl-pad-users


Cheers,

Thilo

====== Below: Release notes =========

The main focus of version 0.2 has been working with files and the 
system pasteboard from within the PerlPad application.

Requirements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     * Mac OS X (has been reported to work with both 10.1.x and 10.2.x)
     * the Camelbones framework (http://camelbones.sourceforge.net)
     * Perl module Devel::Symdump, available on CPAN
     * if you replaced the Perl version that came with Mac OS X with a 
newer one, make sure that it works with Camelbones


Installation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just drop the application into your Applications folder (if you place 
it somewhere else, it will run, but you cannot use its Services). In 
order to activate the Services you just have to run PerlPad as an 
application (by double-clicking on its icon) once.
It will automatically update the Services menu.

Upgrading
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When upgrading from PerlPad 0.1, you have to run the new PerlPad once 
before you can use the Services again. You should also delete the old 
version.


New Features
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     * startup file ~/Library/PerlPad/startup.pl
     * taking input from pasteboard or a file
     * looping over input (similar to Perl command line switches -n/-p)
     * copying output to the pasteboard and/or a file
     * evaluating input text to obtain $_
     * Perl warnings are displayed
     * New menu item to rebuild Services menu and choose keyboard 
shortcuts
     * Application icon
     * Documentation remade with HTML::WebMake

Bug Fixes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     * PerlPad main window remembers its position
     * you can use $a and $b in your snippets
     * support Cocoa interface for System Services error messages 
(although Mac OS X does not make much use of that ...)
     * check for required CPAN modules at startup and fail gracefully if 
they are missing
     * $\, $., $, and such work now

Known bugs
~~~~~~~~~~~

     * trying to use text foreign to the current locale results in nasty 
crash (CB limitation)
     * $_ is not available when reading a file (only <$IN>)
     * handling of references as evaluation results buggy
     * the symbol table browser is not usable yet (will be focus of 0.3)