Mason is a tool for embedding the Perl programming language into text, in order to create text dynamically, most often in HTML. But Mason does not simply stop at HTML. It can just as easily create XML, WML, POD, configuration files, or the complete works of Shakespeare.
Mason was originally written by Jonathan Swartz, with the help of the rest of the CMP development team at CMP Media in 1996, and in its earliest incarnations it was known as Scribe.
Mason was first made publicly available as Version 0.1 in August of 1998. Since that time, Jonathan Swartz has invited your humble authors to participate in the further development of Mason. Mason has been expanded, and rewritten and is much changed from those early days. This book covers Version 1.12 of Mason.