=head1 NAME
-perlfaq3 - Programming Tools ($Revision: 7875 $)
+perlfaq3 - Programming Tools ($Revision: 10127 $)
=head1 DESCRIPTION
If you'd like a graphical user interface and you have Tk, you can use
C<ptkdb>. It's on CPAN and available for free.
-If you need something much more sophisicated and controllable, Leon
+If you need something much more sophisticated and controllable, Leon
Brocard's Devel::ebug (which you can call with the -D switch as -Debug)
gives you the programmatic hooks into everything you need to write your
own (without too much pain and suffering).
The a2ps http://www-inf.enst.fr/%7Edemaille/a2ps/black+white.ps.gz does
lots of things related to generating nicely printed output of
-documents, as does enscript at http://people.ssh.fi/mtr/genscript/ .
+documents.
=head2 Is there a ctags for Perl?
environments) comes with a simple editor. Popular external editors are
BBEdit ( http://www.bbedit.com/ ) or Alpha (
http://www.his.com/~jguyer/Alpha/Alpha8.html ). MacOS X users can use
-Unix editors as well. Neil Bowers (the man behind Geekcruises) has a
-list of Mac editors that can handle Perl (
-http://www.neilbowers.org/macperleditors.html ).
+Unix editors as well.
=over 4
There is also a toyedit Text widget based editor written in Perl
that is distributed with the Tk module on CPAN. The ptkdb
-( http://world.std.com/~aep/ptkdb/ ) is a Perl/tk based debugger that
+( http://ptkdb.sourceforge.net/ ) is a Perl/tk based debugger that
acts as a development environment of sorts. Perl Composer
( http://perlcomposer.sourceforge.net/ ) is an IDE for Perl/Tk
GUI creation.
this program repeats a command and updates the screen as needed, rendering
B<rep ps axu> similar to B<top>.
-=head2 How can I use X or Tk with Perl?
+=head2 How can I write a GUI (X, Tk, Gtk, etc.) in Perl?
+X<GUI> X<Tk> X<Wx> X<WxWidgets> X<Gtk> X<Gtk2> X<CamelBones> X<Qt>
-The Tk.pm module is a completely Perl-based, object-oriented interface
-to the Tk toolkit that doesn't force you to use Tcl just to get at Tk.
-Sx is an interface to the Athena Widget set. Both are available from
-CPAN. See the directory
-http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-category/08_User_Interfaces/
+(contributed by Ben Morrow)
-Invaluable for Perl/Tk programming are the Perl/Tk FAQ at
-http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.lang.perl.tk/ptkFAQ.html , the Perl/Tk Reference
-Guide available at
-http://www.cpan.org/authors/Stephen_O_Lidie/ , and the
-online manpages at
-http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/%7Eamundson/perl/perltk/toc.html .
+There are a number of modules which let you write GUIs in Perl. Most
+GUI toolkits have a perl interface: an incomplete list follows.
+
+=over 4
+
+=item Tk
+
+This works under Unix and Windows, and the current version doesn't
+look half as bad under Windows as it used to. Some of the gui elements
+still don't 'feel' quite right, though. The interface is very natural
+and 'perlish', making it easy to use in small scripts that just need a
+simple gui. It hasn't been updated in a while.
+
+=item Wx
+
+This is a Perl binding for the cross-platform wxWidgets toolkit
+L<http://www.wxwidgets.org>. It works under Unix, Win32 and Mac OS X,
+using native widgets (Gtk under Unix). The interface follows the C++
+interface closely, but the documentation is a little sparse for someone
+who doesn't know the library, mostly just referring you to the C++
+documentation.
+
+=item Gtk and Gtk2
+
+These are Perl bindings for the Gtk toolkit L<http://www.gtk.org>. The
+interface changed significantly between versions 1 and 2 so they have
+separate Perl modules. It runs under Unix, Win32 and Mac OS X (currently
+it requires an X server on Mac OS, but a 'native' port is underway), and
+the widgets look the same on every plaform: i.e., they don't match the
+native widgets. As with Wx, the Perl bindings follow the C API closely,
+and the documentation requires you to read the C documentation to
+understand it.
+
+=item Win32::GUI
+
+This provides access to most of the Win32 GUI widgets from Perl.
+Obviously, it only runs under Win32, and uses native widgets. The Perl
+interface doesn't really follow the C interface: it's been made more
+Perlish, and the documentation is pretty good. More advanced stuff may
+require familiarity with the C Win32 APIs, or reference to MSDN.
+
+=item CamelBones
+
+CamelBones L<http://camelbones.sourceforge.net> is a Perl interface to
+Mac OS X's Cocoa GUI toolkit, and as such can be used to produce native
+GUIs on Mac OS X. It's not on CPAN, as it requires frameworks that
+CPAN.pm doesn't know how to install, but installation is via the
+standard OSX package installer. The Perl API is, again, very close to
+the ObjC API it's wrapping, and the documentation just tells you how to
+translate from one to the other.
+
+=item Qt
+
+There is a Perl interface to TrollTech's Qt toolkit, but it does not
+appear to be maintained.
+
+=item Athena
+
+Sx is an interface to the Athena widget set which comes with X, but
+again it appears not to be much used nowadays.
+
+=back
=head2 How can I make my Perl program run faster?
Pass arrays and hashes by reference, not by value. For one thing, it's
the only way to pass multiple lists or hashes (or both) in a single
call/return. It also avoids creating a copy of all the contents. This
-requires some judgment, however, because any changes will be propagated
+requires some judgement, however, because any changes will be propagated
back to the original data. If you really want to mangle (er, modify) a
copy, you'll have to sacrifice the memory needed to make one.
=head1 REVISION
-Revision: $Revision: 7875 $
+Revision: $Revision: 10127 $
-Date: $Date: 2006-10-04 22:39:26 +0200 (mer, 04 oct 2006) $
+Date: $Date: 2007-10-27 21:40:20 +0200 (Sat, 27 Oct 2007) $
See L<perlfaq> for source control details and availability.
=head1 AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
-Copyright (c) 1997-2006 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
+Copyright (c) 1997-2007 Tom Christiansen, Nathan Torkington, and
other authors as noted. All rights reserved.
This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff