title: How do I properly format plain text data for a simple Perl dictionary app?
body: <p>I have a very simple dictionary application that does search and display. It's built with the <code>Win32::GUI</code> module. I put all the plain text data needed for the dictionary under the <code>__DATA__</code> section. The script itself is very small but with everything under the <code>__DATA__</code> section, its size reaches 30 MB. In order to share the work with my friends, I've then packed the script into a stand-alone executable using the PP utility of the <code>PAR::Packer</code> module with the highest compression level 9 and now I have a single-file dictionary app of about the size of 17MB.</p>
  
  <p>But although I'm very comfortable with the idea of a single-file script, placing such huge amount of text data under the script's DATA section does not feel right. For one thing, when I try opening the script in Padre (Notepad ++ is okay), I'm receiving the error that is like:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p><code>Can't open my script as the script is over the arbitrary file size limit which is currently 500000.</code></p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>My questions: </p>
  
  <p>Does it bring me any extra benefits except for the eliminating of Padre's file opening issue if I move everything under the DATA section to a separate text file?</p>
  
  <p>If I do so, What should I do to reduce the size of the separate file? Zip it and uncompress it while doing search and display?</p>
  
  <p>How do people normally format the text data needed for a dictionary application?</p>
  
  <p>Any comments, ideas or suggestions? Thanks like always :)</p>