Chris asked a few questions about my use of Padre for PDL related stuff. Here's what I have to say about it.
I'm using Ubuntu + Perl 5.10. I used to use Geany, but for reasons not clear in my own memory, I decided to switch to using Padre. I have a few nits with it but generally I have been very, very pleased with it. I just realized that although I've been using Padre for a month or so, I've never read its documentation, which looks to be decent. Once I read that, I'll hopefully have even more useful things to say about it. I specifically wanted to mention that Padre has index functionality similar to PDL's indexing, so we can probably find a way to make PDL's functions get indexed with Padre. Once we've figured that out, we can probably work our '?' and '??' into our own REPL::PDL plugin, and make it bring-up the appropriate help functionality. Long story short: I highly recommend that everybody try using Padre. A large part of the Perl community seems be behind this software so I expect it will see lots of improvements over the next months and years. My notes are below. David *Here's what I really like about Padre:* Not only does Padre have syntax highlighting, it also has a *syntax checker*that runs every few seconds while you type. As far as I can tell, it actually runs your code through Perl's compiler. It reports the errors and warnings, putting colored markers next to the lines that give trouble. For me, a syntax checker is kinda like having a spell checker - I can do without it, but it makes me feel a lot better about what I'm doing and helps me focus on the meat of my writing rather than the minutia. I have already mentioned Padre's help system. It is fantastic. You can look up the documentation for any module installed on your system by simply entering it in the 'Search' box of the help dialog. You can type 'Module::Name' if it's in @INC or you can type '/path/to/my/module.pm', and it will pull up that module's pod, nicely formatted. I have been doing this with my work on IO.pod so I can check how it looks as I go. It's very helpful. I just discovered Padre's help index, which they call 'Context Help' in the Help menu, for some reason. It has LOTS of things indexed, including all of the basic functions, the punctuation variables, and the names of all of the modules installed on your system. It probably has other stuff listed in there, too. We should definitely look into how we might put all the PDL functions into the index when PDL and Padre are co-installed. Ironically, such an index alleviates my original need for PDL::IO.pod. There's a debugger. I used to use the debugger all the time when I worked with Visual C++, but when I switched over to Linux and then turned to Perl, I never got the hang of command-line debuggers like those for GCC or Perl. Instead, I've resorted to using print statements. I'm looking forward to using an IDE-based debugger rather than print statements, though I haven't really needed it yet. There's a Perl REPL, it worked for me, and I was able to 'use PDL' in it! I had trouble installing the REPL because it has a screwed up test suite, but I forced it and got it working anyway. Very cool! I can even generate plots using PLplot with it! I am very impressed with the possible future directions we could take this! *A few nits* Syntax highlighter doesn't process 'defined or' operator, aka '//'. I think it believes you're dividing by a regexp match. To prevent the rest of my document from turning pink, I usually put in another '/' in a comment at the end of the line. Note that the syntax checker processes 'defined or' just fine - it's only a problem with the highlighting. You can't search for a built-in function in Padre's normal Help window - you have to use the help index (aka Context Help). This is a pain if you don't know this, and honestly I don't know why the two windows aren't combined in a more intuitive fashion. But that's a matter of interface, and I'm sure it will come along eventually.
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