NAME
zoidfaq - Frequently Asked Questions for Zoidberg
DESCRIPTION
About the project
What's with the name ?
If you don't know where the name comes from, you should watch more cartoons.
Quoting some futurama episode about a certain docter Zoidberg :
"He's a weird monster who smells
like he eats garbage and does"This program was from the very beginning intended to become a huge and bloated monster.
Is it stable yet ?
NO ! If it is stable we'll call it 1.00 .
Is it safe to use it already ?
Kind of, as long as you don't try too fancy stuff with too many privileges.
Syntax
What's with the single arrow ?
When you type perl code without brackets around it, zoid does a little source filtering making a arrow '->' (the dereference operator) at the start of a word an alias for '$self->'. Where '$self' is the main shell object.
zoid$ ->Commands->cd(q/../)
# is the same as
zoid$ $self->Comamnds->cd(q/../)Unexpected behaviour
The backspace seems rather trigger happy !?
In Zoidbergs default input buffer the backspace is more like an 'undo' then like delete, especially after an expansion using backspace removes the entire expansion.
I got a segfault after using perl syntax, is this a bug ?
Well, if it _is_ a bug then probably it's a bug in perl, not in zoid. Most notoriously if you use globs in perl code, perl 5.8.0 can segfault; upgrading to perl 5.8.1 fixes this problem.
Examples
How to add a keybinding ?
Take a look at the file "key-bindings.pd" in your zoidberg directory. If, for example, you would like to bind the key ^f (control & f) to a subroutine 'bar' of a plugin 'foo' with arguments qw/f00 b4r/, and you need this binding while in insert modus, you put the line
ctrl_f => '->foo->bar(qw/f00 b4r/)',in the nested hash called 'insert' in "key-bindings.pd". You can also bind command sequences to a key like this:
ctrl_b => '->do(q{perl Makefile.PL && make && make test install})'How to write a "hello world" plugin ?
First create a dir '~/.zoid/plugins/HelloWorld'.
Next create a module, for example :
package HelloWorldZoid;
# Zoidberg::Fish is the base class for plugins
use Zoidberg::Fish;
our @ISA = qw/Zoidberg::Fish/;
# no need for a constructor, bootstrap with init
sub init {
my $self = shift;
$self->{config}{string} ||= "Hello world !";
}
# and in this sub we actually print the string
sub hello_world {
my $self = shift;
$self->parent->print( $self->{config}{string} );
}
# this will be called when the plugin is unloaded
sub round_up {
my $self = shift;
$self->parent->print( "someone help me" );
}
1; # keep require happySave the module as '~/.zoid/plugins/HelloWorld/HelloWorldZoid.pm'.
Then create a config file, for the syntax think Data::Dumper output.
$VAR1 = {
module => q/HelloWorldZoid/,
config => { string => q/Hello cruel world !/ },
export => ['hello_world'],
}Save the config file as '~/.zoid/plugins/HelloWorld/PluginConf.pd'.
After restarting zoid, you should have a builtin command "hello_world" that prints the string "Hello cruel world !", and an object called "HelloWorld". Of course you guessed already that you can control the string that will be printed from the config file, and also that it defaults to "Hello world !".