Zoidberg - a modular perl shell, version 0.2b
===============================================

** Laziness, Impatience, Hubris ! **

 http://zoidberg.sourceforge.net

  Zoidberg provides a shell written in perl, configured in
  perl and operated in perl. It is intended as a login shell
  and developement environment. Most likely you'll have to
  be a perl programmer to enjoy this.

 Features include:
    - runs perl code from shell prompt (duh!)
    - sh like evaluation of system executables
    - extendible and configable syntax
    - comes with a SQL syntax plugin (DBI)
    - perl codable config
    - runtime (re-)loadable modules
    - regex tab expansion (this is not a bug !)
    - tab expansion through your perl data structure and objects
    - event based plugin engine
    - support for pipelines
    - support for job control
    - advanced commandline editor
    - vi-style escape modus for commandline editing

 planned:
    - screen like functionality
    - glue for other (non-perl) languages

INSTALLATION

  First of all you need perl <www.perl.com>,
  it is very likely this is allready on your system.
  Zoidberg is tested for perl versions 5.8.0 and 5.6.1
  
  Modules which are not in the Zoidberg package but are depended upon
  by Zoidberg are listed in the file "m/Depends.pd" -- these modules
  are available from CPAN <http://cpan.org>

 To install the package type:
   > perl Makefile.PL
   > make all

 To install dependencies from CPAN try:
   > perl Makefile.PL
   > make dep

 For advanced installation options type:
   > perl Makefile.PL
   > make help

 To install packages from CPAN try for example:
   > perl -MCPAN -e 'install Zoidberg'

  The following plugins (should) contain core functionality:
    Zoidberg::Fish::Buffer
    Zoidberg::Fish::Intel
    Zoidberg::Fish::Prompt
    Zoidberg::Fish::Commands
    Zoidberg::Fish::History

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

  Since we are still in alpha/development fase there will be a lot of bugs.

  Please report bugs through the bug tracker on the sourceforge project page
  <www.sourceforge.net/projects/zoidberg>.

  The Zoidberg shell is being developed for GNU/Linux. It will be tested for
  other UNIX variants - but we garuantee nothing. It is not (yet) (really)
  POSIX compliant.

  Unlike all sh clones Zoidberg is _not_ a command language interpreter, it 
  provides a minimal syntax layer but leaves the real parsing to real 
  interpreters like perl. Zoidberg is a interface to language interpreters.

  Since Zoidberg completely relies on perl, it has both the advantages and
  disadvantages of this language, one of the last kind for example is having a
  rather large footprint. We wouldn't like zoidberg to get really slow,
  but speed isn't our first priority - hardware is cheap. Make sure you have
  enough swap.

AUTHORS

  Jaap Karssenberg || Pardus [Larus] <j.g.karssenberg@student.utwente.nl>
  R.L. Zwart, <carl0s@users.sf.net>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

  Copyright (c) 2002 Jaap G Karssenberg. All rights reserved.
  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
  modify it under the same terms as Perl.

  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See either
  the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details.

  See: <www.perl.com/language/misc/Artistic.html> and
  <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html>