Re^2: Reading Perl documentation in Emacs

Thanks for that feedback! I was sort of expecting that other users would try things I didn't even think of :)

A few remarks:

The "redraw" bug: I have yet to find out why perl-doc-mode gets redraw notifications in some cases (other than e.g. resizing a window), but it didn't occur to me that redrawing loses the menubar index. I guess I can fix that.
speedbar support: Makes sense for "long" documents. Needs a bit of work, though.
Displaying the POD of the actual buffer: That's on my todo list, in particular display of an unsaved buffer. If the buffer is a saved file, than <M-x> perl-doc-file <RET> <RET> should do the trick (another known bug under Emacs 29: the "home" directory ~ isn't correctly expanded in that case). If you change the POD source, then save and hit g in the POD view to get an updated view.
Context menu / top menu: I hadn't thought about this because the mode doesn't have many features to go into a menu, but it makes sense.
Syntax highlighting of code sections: Ah, recursion alert! The code sections might contain POD... Just kidding. The verbatim blocks (that's how POD calls these sections) aren't necessarily Perl code, but in most cases they are. I'm waiting a bit with this one because Emacs 29 with its tree-sitter capabilities explicitly supports "embedded" blocks with different highlighting... and doing it before that's available might be too much effort.
Mouse-over tool tips: What tips should go there? POD doesn't provide much meta-information to use.
Option to open in external browser: I guess that's possible with some limitations (a browser doesn't know how to process a link to another POD file).
Completion/expansion when searching a POD: I must admit that I found completion for module names too slow to be actually useful - but that's probably because I have lots of CPAN stuff installed.

Comment on Re^2: Reading Perl documentation in Emacs

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Re^3: Reading Perl documentation in Emacs by LanX (Saint) on Mar 13, 2023 at 15:04 UTC
Using WoMan on Linux actually already showed me plenty of Perl pods, I think those were installed via apt for system perl and automatically converted to `.3pm` files. And tab completion is supported and fast, it's parsing and caching all man paths. FWIW, I looked into the code of woman-mode and I think it's possible to patch it to have a perlman-mode. But I have to delay that project till after the current ones. > Mouse-over tool tips cperl-toggle-autohelp (you need to set the timer too) - I combined it with tooltip.el to show a popup. > The "redraw" bug: I think it's a bug in 27 and 28, WoMan was only able to set the imenu-index if I set it at startup. the redraw bug is also effecting window-management, it will also split again to two POD windows even after I disabled it. > speedbar support: looking into the code of ECB might help, they have imenu to speedbar support > Syntax highlighting of code sections: Syntax-Highlighting is tricky in dynamic buffers which are actively edited. But POD is static. You might want to have a look into how org-mode is doing it for code section. polymode.el sounds promising too, but I wasn't able to see a working example. Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :) Wikisyntax for the Monastery}	[reply] [d/l]

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Re^3: Reading Perl documentation in Emacs
by LanX (Saint) on Mar 13, 2023 at 15:04 UTC

.3pm

FWIW, I looked into the code of woman-mode and I think it's possible to patch it to have a perlman-mode.

But I have to delay that project till after the current ones.

> Mouse-over tool tips

cperl-toggle-autohelp (you need to set the timer too) - I combined it with tooltip.el to show a popup.

> The "redraw" bug:

I think it's a bug in 27 and 28, WoMan was only able to set the imenu-index if I set it at startup.

the redraw bug is also effecting window-management, it will also split again to two POD windows even after I disabled it.

> speedbar support:

looking into the code of ECB might help, they have imenu to speedbar support

> Syntax highlighting of code sections:

Syntax-Highlighting is tricky in dynamic buffers which are actively edited. But POD is static.

You might want to have a look into how org-mode is doing it for code section.

polymode.el sounds promising too, but I wasn't able to see a working example.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the 𐍀𐌴𐍂𐌻 Programming Language :)

Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

[reply]
[d/l]