So my computer crashed - this is normal, as it's old and clunky and doesn't cohabit well with my cable modem and runs win98 and I'm too cheap and lazy to get anything else.

And whilst it reconstructed myself I thought I'd use my time profitably by reading the Camel. Aren't I a diligent monk?

So what to read? Need to formalise my cargo-cultish understanding of derefencing, so turn to page 251. But for no well explained reason I happen to glance to the left and I see the *foo{THING} syntax... which leads me to the discovery that a filehandle is a THING in the same way an array or a scalar is a THING... well, now, that's interesting sez I, and turns back one page where I read

References to filehandles or directory handles can be created by referncing the typeglob of the same name

Well I'll be horn swoggled. Turning to my script, I add a line to the definition of my pdf object:

my $pdf = new PDF::Create(
    'Version'  => 1.2,
    'Author'   => 'me',
    'Title'    => 'Goom',
    'fh'       => *STDOUT,   # this one
);
[download]

... and now it works, just how I wanted, with the module in its un-butchered format. What were the chances of my blundering across the answer to this question, which has been bothering me for some time, just now?

§ George Sherston