Peter Lavender

After a long 3 months or so, Padre 0.86 has been rolled up and released into the wild.

0.86 comes with a warning that there are still some lumps to be smoothed out, but with that it also comes with a newer version of Scintilla which means better support of Perl.

Thanks to the efforts of Ahmad Zawawi and Mark Dootson, who you often see in the Perl Wx mailing list, this version of Padre now supports an updated version of the Scintilla text editor/control. You can enable the new Scintilla by setting the feature_wx_scintilla configuration parameter in Padre's Tools / Preferences / Advanced dialog.

During the time Ahmad was trying to get Wx::Scintilla compiling he mentioned in the #padre irc channel on irc.perl.org, that he wasn't seeing enough tests come through and provided a link to set up Testing/Reporting. After following the link and about 10 minutes reading and setting up, I'm now contributing a little more to the Perl ecosystem by sending reports from each module I install. With the addition of perlbrew allowing you to install more than one version of perl on your system, this is a great opportunity to give back to the community.

So it's with great pleasure, and a mild sense of awe that all these people can find time to contribute in such a meaningful way, the list of changes for Padre 0.86:

Sebastian Willing committed a number of fixes and improvements over the last few months. Padre now has a fast find dialog that opens up in the bottom of the editor window, it's a bit like the fast find you get in Firefox. There is still some work to be done ironing out the finer points of the current implementation, which we should see in the next release - no, it won't be as long as this release was.

    - Handle corrupt padre.db in SessionManager (SEWI)

    - Add a test plugin and first tests using that plugin (SEWI)

    - Add plugin hooks (SEWI)

    - Extent Ctrl-left-mouse-click to modules and files with path (SEWI)

    - Fix #1122: Save intuition recognizes more tests (SEWI)

    - Add File->Delete menu option (#1179) (SEWI)

    - Fix #1182: Crash when enabling a plugin (SEWI)

    - Ctrl-F launches the quick search (bottom pane), 2nd time Ctrl-F

      launches regular search and 3rd time Ctrl-F launches find in files

      which will loose it's own shortcut Ctrl-Shift-F in the future #1223 (SEWI)

    - Set focus to editor window if search bar is closed (SEWI)

    - Set focus to editor after switching panes/tabs (SEWI)

    - Add File -> New -> Copy of current document (SEWI)

    - Fix "last update" timestamp for sessions (SEWI)

    - Share one search termin between FindFast (panel), Find (dialog) and

      Find in files (SEWI)

    - ESC now closes the find dialog (1st ESC) and the output window (2nd) (SEWI)

Adam Kennedy as always manages to get things done no one else is doing, or is too scared to do!

    - Avoid running pointless syntax checks for unused documents (ADAMK)

    - No longer need a different editor class for the Preferences dialog (ADAMK)

    - Reverted commit 13860 which tried to fix ticker #1141 but broken the

      directory list at startup at the same time (ADAMK)

    - The Preferences dialog now translates options in drop-down boxes (ADAMK)

    - Moved various Perl 5 related config options into a unified config

      namespace lang_perl5_* (ADAMK)

    - Moved various Perl 5 Preferences dialog elements into a single Perl 5

      specific tab in preparation for additional future tabs (ADAMK)

    - Fixed bug where the Function List scanner was incorrectly matching

      __DATA__ or __END__ anywhere in any statement (ADAMK)

    - Config file entries referring to values which are not in the valid option

      list for a setting will use the default, but not overwrite (ADAMK)

    - Upgraded Padre::Wx::Dialog::Text to wxFormBuilder (ADAMK)

    - Find and Find in Files now save search options again (ADAMK)

    - PluginManager now checks for a defined ->VERSION in plugins to help

      make sure they are real modules and don't have mismatching package

      statements or similar weird problems (ADAMK)

    - Upgraded Padre::Wx::Dialog::Bookmarks to wxFormBuilder (ADAMK)

    - Shrunk the code needed to support the "Convert Encoding" commands and

      moved it to Padre::Wx::Main, removing the need for a dedicated

      "Convert Encoding" dialog (ADAMK)

    - Moved all Module::Starter options into module_starter_* (ADAMK)

    - A bug in the EOL Mode setup when opening Windows-mode text documents

      while the default line endings are set to Unix was resulting in the

      corruption of documents into mixed newline (ADAMK)

    - Expanding the coverage of "apply" handlers in Padre::Config in

      preparation for Padre Sync (ADAMK)

    - Unify terminology for the Firefox-like search box to "Find Fast" (ADAMK)

    - Fast Find resets term correctly across multiple uses (ADAMK)

    - Padre::Project::Perl detects project-wide version correctly (ADAMK)

As already mentioned, Ahmad Zawawi has given Padre a more up to date Scintilla, the most notable reason mentioned in the #padre irc channel was that // is now properly handled, however that's not the only reason, as with all software, updates and improvements come along and being stuck with a slow release schedule ( yes slower than Padre's ) meant that it would take a long time before the Scintilla text control would be updated in wxWidgets, or is it Wx... I never know.

What's most notable though is this was all done while also getting things sorted out for married life, it wasn't unusual to see Ahmad in irc and then having to head out to do furniture shopping with his bride to be, or other important shopping that needs to be done before a wedding. I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing Ahmad well in surviving the pre-marriage trials, at least we got a new Scintilla though!

    - Bumped Wx dependency to 0.9901 to fix the Wx::Button::GetDefaultSize

      build bug (AZAWAWI)

    - Padre can now use Wx::Scintilla if feature_wx_scintilla is enabled.

      This fixes #257: Backport Scintilla Perl lexer for wxWidgets 2.8.10?

      (AZAWAWI)

    - About dialog displays now the Wx::Scintilla version if it is being used

      by Padre (AZAWAWI)

    - Padre can use Wx::Scintilla's built-in Perl 6 lexer if Wx::Scintilla

      is being used by Padre (AZAWAWI)

Gabor Szabo managed to commit some fixes and improvements between really helpful screen casts. Go check them out while you install Padre.

    - Add list of escape characters to the Regex Editor (SZABGAB)

    - Fix #510, #704, #1178 Closing DocBrowser crashing Padre (SZABGAB)

    - Move Outline building to PPIx::EditorTools::Outline 0.12 (SZABGAB)

    - Add menu options in View to Fold All and Unfold All (SZABGAB)

    - Add menu option to Fold/Unfold where the cursor is now (SZABGAB)

    - Move the standard PPILexer to PPIx::EditorTools::Lexer 0.13 (SZABGAB)

    - Allow spaces in the path and filename of Perl script and still

      be able to run them. #1219 (SZABGAB)

    - Regex Editor: Substitution can be toggled and it is off by default (SZABGAB)

Zeno Gantner chipped in

    - Fix #1124: 'Description' column not displayed when all descriptions empty

      (ZENOG)

    - Open Resources: do not match path for .t files (ZENOG, found by SZABGAB)

As did a number of others, whose names I haven't committed to memory or have seen for the first time:

    - Migration of Style Settings from Menu to Preferences window (CLAUDIO)

    - Disable overlay scrollbars on linux (CLAUDIO)

    - "toggle comments" button doesn't require text selection (GARU)

    - Updated perlopquick.pod (Perl 5 operator quick reference) to latest

      version (COWENS, AZAWAWI)

    - Fixed wxWidgets 2.8.12 wxAuiNoteBook bug: the window will not carry

      updates while it is frozen (MDOOTSON, AZAWAWI, ADAMK)

    - Fix #1138: Padre single instance server not working (MJ41)

So a big list of changes for Padre 0.86, it's been a while coming and most of that can be laid at my feet, as the the worlds worst player in multiplayer COD Black Ops, I have to admit that any time there was a slight reason NOT to roll out a release I'd slink off and be handed humiliation on the big screen.

Thankfully that addiction is starting to wear off and I have promised to be more pushy with the releases.

A big thanks to everyone who contributes to Padre, the Perl IDE, whether it be directly by committing changes to the code base or writing document or simply just dropping by the IRC change on irc.perl.org #padre.