The most requested feature of the Cellgraph is now in operation: Colors.

I added one panel with all the options and functions to control them. It is a little complex, but well documented (see here). In short you can load and save from and to the config file single colors and color sets under special names. And then you have direct access to the gradient and the complimentary function of Graphics::Toolkit::Color. Reverting to the default grayscale is always possible with an push on a button.

After the Harmonograph (which got in the meantime greatly extended), I got another tool for you to create art with - the Cellgraph:

Juhuu, released Kephra 0.401 in the spirit release early - release often. It is the start of a complete rewrite. So it's back to zero: now it can only edit one file at a time and has only Perl highlighting and UTF-8 or ASCII encoding. But some of you will still want to use it (beside vi, emacs, VStudio or atom - I know) because of the comfort in basic editing it provides. The following article explains what I mean by that.

Kephra, an editor for programming (mostly Perl) written in WxPerl is my main project since I stumbled into the Perl community. Most people I know already heard of it - but I want to write about a new development that might be helpful for some, which might consider to use it even if it has a very limited feature set (forth rewrite baby!).

I just release App::GUI::Harmonograph for your leisure and pleasure. In case your not not an English noble man form the 18th century who could afford an Harmonograph, even though modern DIY kits are quite affordable, it is a set of set of 3 independent pendula, which move a pen and and paper to create harmonious drawings, of sometimes…

You know the good feeling when you find a solution for a problem after it hounted you many months or even years. I had such a moment today when i finally found (with the help of the excellent Mark Dootson++ of course ) a way to load icons from a set a data and not from a file. Now I can have a complete set of default configs inside a Module so Kephra can boot fully featured no matter what. Yes the Kephra rewrite is alive. I just reorganized the branches and the development model. It runs now under mac and we have full (more?) utf safety. The…

In the next Perl Magazine will come the 12th and last part of my big WxPerl tutorial. To me its almost like my teenage child is now out of the house (brain). You might complain: "but its German, I can't read that". Don't worry the resulting book will be in English. But this post is really about something different, but related, in fact about coming English articles: written by You.

This will be just partially about the just ended Italian Perl Workshop in Bologna, because frankly most of the talks I did not not understand, even if I would like to improve my Italian. So why even bother being one of a hand full not Italian?

As Kephra gets prepared for its great day, there are some design decisions hat make me just happy and maybe you will benefit from it too.

The previous incarnation had also a command list. A central place where most calls are stored that end up in the menu a toolbar or the user can access otherwise. But it was not only the API into userland, it also helped to create menus and bars from very simple yaml files, that only listed command IDs. Because to every command belonged a label, icon, and key informations, the rest was almost trivial. This way you could very easily change the menus w…

DISCLAIMER: this text is lengthy - if yor not interested in GUI programming or API design, you should stop reading now.

This year I held at YAPC::EU, italian and german Perl workshop a lightning talk about an idea - complete vaporware, but an idea of a better world where Apps are a breeze to write. But this will maybe change since I'm much inclined to do it, it just will take some time. The problem: GUI programming sucks badly. Its way to complex and too much to type, especially in Wx. There are some techniques to ease the pain (a talk about that I will submit to this years YAPC) but …

As an update and continuation of my last post: lot has happened. This is also a kind of Grant report since the Perl 6 Tablets are rolling again and I plan to cash in the first half of the TPF grant around YAPC in Riga but definitively before Frankfurt (german perl workshop).

You may ask what took so long or why I believe to be now much faster. I just…

The Perl 5 tutorial for freiesMagazin (the first and hardest part) is complete and I'm very happy about it (read it in the next month issue). It was a great teamwork and all who read it so far, like it very much. The result will reside in the wiki of perlcommunity.de (link later when arrived there), so it can be further expanded/improved/updated and can help a lot people more. Because its the most visited Perl forum in German and thanks to tinita++ we have there banners that link to different important pages in the wiki which gets 20 times more visited…

its a small idea and a module. in fact I wrote the core code in a minute on a slide of my talk I held 2 weeks ago in Berlin. Now it becomes "real" :). from the "doc":

use Tie::Wx::Widget;

tie $tiedwidget, Tie::Wx::Widget, $widgetref;

# instead of say $widgetref->GetValue;
say $tiedwidget;

# instead of $widgetref->SetValue('7');
$tiedwidget = 7;

untie $tiedwidget;

Its just the simple idea to reduce visible syntax, but …

OMG yet another new year BS.

Since I live here on planet earth where biology by in large restarts with every spring, which happens in this part of the world in march, I'm bit reluctant to join the gregorian calender, which is named after a roman katholic pope and a calendar which prior to that changed its start to january by another roman dictator, which makes it further unatractive to me. don't get me wrong, I dont want to act here any more special then necesary, but its good to review and to make plans.

so here is my 2010:

* ="http://kephra.sourceforge.net/sit…

He ist lead dev of Scintilla the edit component, Kephra, Padre and Kommodo are using. And I was very happy to read that he will open up the internal API. So Perl editors will be able to do even more.

Exciting.

its been a great YAPC, emotionally. Not as many technical talks where really compelling, but lot where really funny. But I met a lot of people I like. martin berends, jnthn and the bunch, finally i met mattia barbon which was also releasing and intresting (our interview will come soon on radio YAPC). I met a lot of germans, larry who tried to talk to me german too. and there were a lot more. great people, great food, wonderfull ice cream, fantastic hostel, great rides. it was the best possible holiday for me now.

my talks were both very well recieved but attended by few. Kephra is now…

I already reported about WxDocular and about the WxPerl course I will give in Pisa. I even wrote about Kephra which will have a new release really soon.

What i want to tell now, touches all these 3 topics. For the WxCourse i write a specialized Editor-App for easy skipping between the many examples, alter and run them and browse some docs. And this App is also the goal, all these examples dri…

As I prepare the material for my 5h WxPerl training course in Pisa (attendees are always welcome :)) I like to post some information you may find useful if you're a WxPerl user. Today I started to prepare my slides, which will cover only the theoretical part/first chapter. After that we will just deal with code that we do run live. For this I prepare many scripts which are snapshots of an real app in development. After doing this kind of teaching last year…

After Kieren Diments talk in schorndorf I held a spontaneous lightning talk about the state of the project called Perl 6. The slides wouldn't tell you much, since i pushed them together in 1 hour while listening to others. But i had to do it, since lot of people in the audience I talked with had no clear knowledge and some even said things on stage, that were hardly bearable. Get me right. i can listen to any opinion. No problem if someone says…

lets see how useful this platform will be, but i really hope to release Kephra 0.4.3 next days.