Mason Loring Bliss wrote:
>Hey, all.
>
>I'm looking for some advice. I'm using Perl for a tournament swiss-pairings
>program, and I've gotten to where I want to tack on a graphical user
>interface.
>
>My primary reason for using Perl is that it'll run everywhere, and I'd like
>for my graphical interface to be easily installed and universal as well.
>
>I run Debian GNU/Linux and MacOS X Tiger personally, but I also want the
>program to run seamlessly and painlessly on Windows.
>
>Perl/Tk seems like a good choice, but it is intensely painful to get going
>on MacOS X, it seems. Instructions specify reinstalling Perl from source,
>which requires XCode. I don't want to force non-developers who want to run
>a tournament using my software to have to download hundreds of megabytes
>of software and then run through a sketchy build process. Aside from this,
>Tk would be great, as it's easily used under Unix and Windows. I've already
>started using Tk, but the pain Mac users will experience seems like it might
>be enough to cause me to scrap this avenue of exploration.
>
>wxPerl seems like a choice as well, but I don't know how widespread it is.
>It seems not to exist in Debian Sarge or NetBSD pkgsrc, for instance. It
>comes with the base system in MacOS X... I am still in the process of
>figuring out how to get foo.pl to tie itself to /usr/bin/{wxP,p}erl in
>MacOS X, though. There's http://www.web42.com/software/perlwrapper/, which
>I haven't tried yet, and there are binary installers for Windows.
>
>Java would do what I want everywhere, especially if I limited myself to,
>say, functionality available in Kaffe, but I don't want to use Java for
>this! If someone has a suggestion for a single cross-platform GUI toolkit
>I can use with Perl that won't require any bleeding on my users' parts,
>I'd be grateful. What have you used? What have you liked about it?
>
>Thanks!
>
>
>
Have a look at Perl-Gtk2: http://gtk2-perl.sourceforge.net/
I've been using it for about a year now, and it's a very impressive
solution.
It looks *far* better than Perl/Tk applications, has a much richer set
of widgets, is themeable ( Gtk2 is themeable ) and is quite fast.
Another thing going for Gtk2 is it's widget layout, which is *far*
superior to other widget toolkits I've used. I especially like Glade,
which is excellent for quickly assembling the GUI.
Obviously under Linux it works flawlessly. I also have it working
without any issues ( theme switcher included ), but it runs about 20-30%
slower than under linux. The Perl application runs at the same speed ( I
think ), but Gtk2 itself doesn't seem as optimised under Windows - which
isn't really surprising. I'm using a Gtk2 installer available at
http://members.lycos.co.uk/alexv6/ and it's quite painless to get it
working and the Perl-Gtk2 bindings installed ( install with
ActiveState's ppm tool ). I've ported a number of our database
front-ends to Perl-Gtk2, initially targetting Linux, and since found out
that they work perfectly with this setup. Quite impressive. A screenshot
of one of the apps is available at:
http://entropy.homelinux.org/Gtk2-Ex-DBI/ ... this also the page for my
1st open-source project: Gtk2::Ex::DBI ... scroll down to the bottom for
a link ot the screenshot. I'm using a kinda-tacky OS-X theme in this
shot, but you get the idea.
OS X is a slightly different story. Users need to be running an X
server, which some object to, but isn't all that bad. You then need to
install Gtk2. I've tried to do this via 'darwin ports', and have not had
a great deal of success. However one of the Perl-Gtk2 developers assures
me that if you install via 'fink' ( which is the more popular method ),
then it works perfectly - he does most of his development on a Powerbook.
There is also Perl-QT, but you'll need a commercial license for
commercial apps, and I simply don't like QT.
--
Daniel Kasak
IT Developer
NUS Consulting Group
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North Sydney, NSW, Australia 2060
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