ZOIDFAQ(1)            User Contributed Perl Documentation           ZOIDFAQ(1)



NAME
       zoidfaq - Frequently Asked Questions about 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 doctor 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.

       But why !?

       First of all because we like Perl better then shell script, and with
       the right glue you can do real powerful things with Perl statements in
       your shell.

       Secondly because we wanted a platform to try out some experimental
       shell features, and it is really nice to be able to do so in Perl in an
       object oriented fashion.  With zoid you don't need to patch archaic C
       code just to add for example another builtin function to your shell.

   Features
       How do I turn off ansi colours ?

       Set the environment variable CLICOLOR to 0 (null).

       What's with the single arrow syntax ?

       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 '"$shell->"'. Where '$shell' is the
       main shell object.

        zoid$ ->Commands->cd(q/../)
        # is the same as
        zoid$ $shell->Commands->cd(q/../)

       I dislike jobs ending without waiting for me to hit a key :(

       This behaviour is called asynchronous notification.  It is not a real
       default option; it is turned on in the default 'zoidrc' file.  Remove
       the setting "notify" from our 'zoidrc' file or try "set +o notify".

       Does zoid have a "RPROMPT" ?

       No, but Term::ReadLine::Zoid does :) If you use this module try setting
       $ENV{RPS1}.

       Does zoid support utf8/encoding .../locale ?

       No, but everyone agrees it would very nice if it did.

       The problem is that I ([Pardus]) don't do anything with localization so
       I don't have any idea how this should work, no setup to test it, no
       experience this.  Since I don't use this myself for me this has a low
       priority.

       Since Perl has a lot of documentation and pragmas relating to this
       topic I have the feeling it shouldn't be to hard to have zoid at least
       understand character encoding correctly, but I'm going to need help
       from people with more experience in using these Perl features.

       So If YOU want utf8/encoding .../locale in zoid and have some
       experience in using character encodings in Perl please contact [Pardus]
       by email.

       I miss feature X, every shell should have feature X !

       Probably it's on the TODO list, or at some list at least.  Try the
       mailing list.

   Development
       Can I use Zoidberg as a frontend for my own module ?

       Yes you can. Basicly all you need to do is to set the mode of the shell
       to the namespace of your module; see zoiduser(1) for details.  For a
       more elaborate example of using Zoidberg to build a custom shell
       application have a look at "examples/cpan.pl" which is included in the
       source package.

       How do I get Zoid to cooperate with a GUI toolkit like Tk ?

       To my understanding the only thing needed to cooperate with any GUI
       toolkit is a "heartbeat" event to update the GUI. If you use our
       Term::ReadLine::Zoid library zoid will give you an event called "beat".
       Try something like:

        $shell->{events}{beat} = \&update_gui;

       ... please send me (Pardus) a copy if you have working example code of
       a gui application using zoid.

   Errors
       My prompt looks something like: \C{bold,blue}\u@\h \A
       \C{green}\W\$\C{reset}

       You need to have Env::PS1 installed to render that.  Did you only
       install Zoidberg or did you install the full Bundle::Zoidberg ?

       The default zoidrc file sets this PS1 string and counts on the
       availabilty of Env::PS1. If for some reason you choose not to use
       Env::PS1 you should change PS1 to something less obfuscated in the rc
       file.

       I upgraded to a new version of zoid and it crashes immediately !?

       If you use Term::ReadLine::Zoid, make sure not to use a version older
       then your version of Zoidberg.  When using the latest version of zoid,
       the latest version of Term::ReadLine::Zoid should work.  Try installing
       Bundle::Zoidberg instead of just Zoidberg.

       If you have all dependencies right you might need to remove/clean the
       directory "~/.zoid".  Also it might be a good idea to clean up
       "/usr/share/zoid" and/or "/usr/local/share/zoid" before installing a
       new version.

       I upgraded to a new version of zoid and it hangs !

       See the previous question.

       Versions of Env::PS1 prior to 0.4 are known to behave badly when used
       on a system with a case-insensitive filesystem. Install version 0.4 for
       the fix.

       I got a segfault, is this a bug ?

       Well, if it is a bug at all 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 at least Perl 5.8.2 fixes this problem.

       On the other hand if zoid dies with an "attempt to free an unreferenced
       scalar" kind of message it probably is a bug in zoid, please report it.

SEE ALSO
       perl(1), <http://zoidberg.sourceforge.net>



perl v5.12.2                      2006-02-11                        ZOIDFAQ(1)
