Peter Lavender

Padre 0.76 was uploaded to Pause on Wednesday night my time (.au), I didn't have it in me to write up the release announcement at the time, and somehow last night slipped by completely. So while I wait for my son's end of school year presentations to begin, I'll try to be a little more productive with my time.

0.76 once again sees a lot of work done by two main contributors, Ahmed Zawawi and Zeno Gantner.

It also sees a great response from the translators with a late call for translations by Zeno just prior to release.

I have so say that the most marked change I noticed when I fired up 0.76 for the first time was the changes to the Syntax Check tab done by Ahmed. This is a much needed improvement to one of my more used features of Padre. Great work Ahmed and thanks!

OK, so what's come through this development cycle:

Zeno made a number of changes, improvements and fixes:

    - Fix #636: Filter too strict (Padre CPAN module installer) (ZENOG)
    - Fix #1032: Regex Editor: Escape sequences don't work in
      "Result from replace" (ZENOG)
    - consider script and interpreter parameters when debugging Perl scripts
      (ZENOG)
    - Fix #814: Find-in-files result window, clicking on filename does not do
      anything (ZENOG)
    - Document::get_command now has two named arguments: 'trace' for diagnostic
      output, and 'debug' for enabling a debugger. Plug-ins that use
      get_command(1) need to change this call to get_command({ trace => 1})
      (ZENOG)
    - remove configuration option 'find_quick' (not used any more) (ZENOG)      
    - Regex editor: insert complete substitution operator, including modifiers;
      underline match results so that matching whitespaces are also highlighted;
      add tooltips to modifiers; only update regex description if visible (avoid
      require if not necessary) (ZENOG)
    - Fix #922: Regex editor keeps first language after language change (ZENOG)
    - Fix #957: Syntax Check should use perl given in Preferences (ZENOG)    

Ahmed blitzed the commits for Padre with a swathe of bug fixes and improvements:

    - Next/previous file now use Ctrl-Page Down/Up instead of Alt-Right/Left
      (AZAWAWI)
    - Find in Files results panel now uses a tree instead of a text area and
      clicking n a result opens the file at the specified line number
      as expected (AZAWAWI)
    - Updated the experimental Padre wizard API and integrated it with the
      wizard selector dialog. This is still disabled by default and can be
      enabled by the 'feature_wizard_selector' configuration setting (AZAWAWI)
    - Fix the bug of lost user selection when searching a big project directory
      and typing fast in "Open Resource" dialog (AZAWAWI)
    - Fixed "Open Resource" and "Quick Menu Access" dialogs to display recently-
      used resources by last usage being first instead by filename (AZAWAWI)
    - As the user types the search term in the "Find in Files" dialog, make
      sure the find button enabled status is correct (AZAWAWI)
    - Fix #1051: Syntax checker does not return the correct error message 
      (AZAWAWI)
    - By removing -Mdiagnostics (which enabled 'use warnings') from syntax
      checker, we now get a more correct syntax checking behavior (AZAWAWI)
    - Removed custom parsing of Perl's standard error in syntax checker and
      reused Parse::ErrorString::Perl to get better error parsing and diagnostic
      information via perldiag (AZAWAWI)
    - "Error List" window has been removed since it is redundant to
      "Syntax Check" window (AZAWAWI)
    - In "Open Resource" and "Quick Menu Access" UP arrow shifts focus to
      the results list when the focus is on the filter field (AZAWAWI)
    - Moved from the simple 0 and 1 age of error 'severity' to the actual way
      Perl classifies errors as in perldiag. The syntax task now passes upon
      completion a reference an array of Parse::ErrorString::Perl::ErrorItem
      objects (AZAWAWI)
    - "Syntax Check" window is now a tree instead of a list. First-level nodes
      represent the error/warning messages and the second-level nodes are the
      perldiag diagnostics for them (if available) (AZAWAWI)
    - "Select Next Problem" is now working again after it was broken since Padre
      0.57. Removed Copy Selected/All features until requested again (AZAWAWI)
    - Removed "Errors" window and moved its only useful feature: Perl
      diagnostics help to "Syntax Check" window (AZAWAWI)
    - Removed tooltip from margin error markers as it was broken since Padre
      0.65+ (AZAWAWI)
    - Fix #1059: Padre 0.74 build failure on 5.8.9 (AZAWAWI)
    - Added feature_restart_hung_task_manager configuration setting to enable
      automatic restart of the currently hung task manager. This is enabled by
      default (AZAWAWI)
    - Fix #1068: Padre Task manager fails to run tasks after stress testing it
      (AZAWAWI)
    - No more redirecting words under the cursor that are Perl symbols to
      perldata help topic (AZAWAWI)
    - Changes or Changelog files are now detected as text instead of CSS files
      (AZAWAWI)
    - In F2 help search, core module since-Perl-version string is now a v-string
      (e.g. v5.8.9 instead of v5.008009) (AZAWAWI)

Adam Kennedy corrected a start up bug:

    - Correctly start up maximized if we were closed maximized (ADAMK)

Some fixes are a combined effort, again Mark Dootson pops in and offers support and assistance when needed:

    - Fixed #881 "Find In Files" results window should be prettier 
      (AZAWAWI, ZENOG)
    - Fix #1064: Build failures on Padre 0.74 Perl 5.8.9 
      (AZAWAWI, ADAMK, MDOOTSON)      

And finally a big thanks to our translators for again keeping Padre up to date with translations:

    - Update German translation (ZENOG)
    - Update Italian translation (SBLANDIN)
    - Update Dutch and Spanish translation (CLAUDIO)
    - Update Russan translation (Vladimir)

As you can see things are still moving along at a fair clip, even with some of the key contributors busy with other aspects of life, be it personal, professional or just plain taking a break.

Improvements and bug fixes are part and parcel of any software application, it's even cooler when it's in a language you know and you are welcome and even encouraged to work on it yourself.

So as we head towards the time of year many of us take a break from working lives, recharge your batteries and if you find you have an itch to scratch, drop on my the #padre channel on irc.perl.org, say hi get a commit bit and scratch away.

Don't worry if you don't have the desire to trawl through pages of code, drop on in any time to say hello, ask a question or discuss things that you would like to see in Padre, either as a new capability or as an improvement to existing functionality. If you're lucky, it might be something that bugs one of the developers enough to get their attention, just like the Syntax Check changes made by Ahmed this release.