Project meetings are boring right?!? Generating boring action points/minutes of meeting docs in MS Word is even worse!!!

This is why I have recently put together this simple script for generating action points from meetings for directly pasting onto the bodies of emails (i.e. nothing too formal). This makes use of Text::Fold, Text::TabularDisplay and YAML::XS, although I found that I had to hack the text going into Text::TabularDisplay so as not to get paragraphs starting with a space. Maybe I am doing something not 100% correct but the script works and I am very happy with it...

#!c:/perl/bin/perl.exe -w
use Modern::Perl;
use YAML::XS;
use Data::Dumper;
use Text::TabularDisplay;
use Text::Fold;

# Note: use YAML::XS not YAML to appropriately handle
# multiline blocks.  Do this in Windows:
# 'perl -MCPAN -e shell'
# then 'install YAML::XS'
# ** This won't be available from the PPM GUI in Windows **

my $yml;
{
    local $/ = undef;
    $yml = <DATA>;
}

my (@arr) = Load($yml); 
my $table = Text::TabularDisplay->new(qw(ID Description By Date));
my $count;

sub add_to_table
{
    my ($desc, $area, $resp, $by) = @_;
    $count++; # count defined outside sub and captured by closure
    (my $s = fold_text("$area: $desc", 62, 
        { soft_hyphen_threshold => 10 })) =~ s/^\s+//mg;
    my @row = ($count, $s, $resp, $by);
    $table->add(@row); # table defined outside and captured by closure
}

# map called in void context with the express purpose of invoking 
# the handy side-effect of the add_to_table sub which appends 
# each record as row into the tabular display referenced by 
# the $table var
map { add_to_table($_->{description}, $_->{area}, 
                   $_->{responsible}, $_->{by} )  }
sort { $a->{area} <=> $b->{area} || 
       $a->{responsible} cmp $b->{responsible}    } @arr;

say $table->render;

__DATA__
---
description: Mickey was asked by Minie to attend UAT at Western 
             Controls on the 17/08
area:        1200
responsible: Mickey
by:          17/08
---
description: Mickey indicated that he experienced problems with 
             some labels for Area 1210 and requested that the 
             inspection of the labels for areas 1210 and 1128 
             be postponed to Wednesday
area:        1210
responsible: Mickey
by:          19/08
...
[download]

and the output... (adjusted to fit here):

+----+--------------------------------------------+--------+-------+
| ID | Description                                | By     | Date  |
+----+--------------------------------------------+--------+-------+
| 1  | 1200: Mickey were asked by Minie to attend | Mickey | 17/08 |
|    | UAT at Western Controls on the 17/08       |        |       |
| 2  | 1210: Mickey indicated that we experienced | Mickey | 19/08 |
|    | problems with some labels for Area 1210    |        |       |
|    | and requested that the inspection of the   |        |       |
|    | labels for areas 1210 and 1128 be          |        |       |
|    | postponed to Wednesday                     |        |       |
+----+--------------------------------------------+--------+-------+
[download]

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