announcing file::sharedir::pathclass

following last week's announce of file::homedir::pathclas, i also committed file::sharedir::pathclass on the same principle. therefore, if you always wrap file::sharedir results in path::class objects for greater convenience, just use file::sharedir::pathclass instead, which is doing that automatically for you.

random file-homedir bits

no need to present file::homedir, the module to use to retrieve various information such as where is my home, where is my desktop, where are my documents, etc.

since my needs were not all covered, i contacted alias with some of my ideas. he kindly gave me a commit bit so i can scratch my itches at will...

i therefore implemented xdg support for recent unix desktops, with daxim's help. this means that unix platforms with gnome, kde or any recent desktops won't report $HOME as the one and unique answer to all those questions. this feature is available in released file-homedir 0.91 - towards a cleaning of our homedirs, yay!

still in the work (not yet released), i've also checked in a my_dist_data($dist) function, to standardize the directory where the application will store its internal data, such as database or cache. it is located in:

my_data()/Perl/dist/$dist

following the now traditional data/vendor/application scheme (on legacy unix desktops, the directory will be $HOME/.perl/dist/$dist/var, to be sure that it's a hidden directory). to be consistent with file::sharedir, i guess i'll also implement my_module_data($module), following the same reasoning.

this will likely be released in version 0.92, before working on the last remaining bit on my plate: my_dist_config($dist), returning a directory where an application will be able to store its configuration. it's a bit different of the data directory (even if config is some kind of data): data is supposed to be transient, or can be removed without harming the app - while the config should not be erased. however, it's not really as straightforward as the data directory, since not all platforms support this: on windows, users are not supposed to update config by hand, so it's often stored in the registry... so how to preserve the cross-distribution nature of file-homedir for this very feature? this will require some thinking...

finally, it's with great pleasure that i'm announcing file-homedir-pathclass, which is a convenient wrapper around file-homedir returning path::class objects. alias did not want to introduce it in file-homedir to preserve compatibility, and suggested to release it as a new dist... so i released this new module, allowing to write for example:

perl -MFile::HomeDir::PathClass=-all -E 'say $_ for my_home()->children'

how to retrieve image size in perl

today's topic is quite easy: retrieving image size (in perl, with the help of cpan of course). indeed, when one wants to resize an image, it's often interesting to know its current size.

the easiest way to retrieve those information is of course to use image::size:

easy, wasn't it?

however, as mentioned previously, retrieving those information is often just the prelude before doing some transformation to the image itself. and image::size, while doing it perfectly, does only one thing - it cannot be used for any other image manipulation. so if you intend to use another module after, you can as well use this other module to retrieve this information: that'll be faster (image read only once) and use less memory (only one module loaded). here's how to get those information with image::magick:

it wasn't that difficult, and opens the whole image magick world to your program!