Mastering Perl/Tk Book

Perl is well-known as a language for server-side scripting, but Mastering Perl/Tk shows Perl developers how to build cross-platform client applications with rich graphical interfaces. Tk stands for toolkit and was developed by John Ousterhout as a graphical extension to his Tcl scripting language. Perl/Tk fully integrates Tk into Perl, and supported platforms include Unix, Windows and Mac OS. This authoritative guide teaches Perl/Tk from scratch, but readers are assumed to have existing skills in Perl itself. After a brief introduction, the authors get quickly into nitty-gritty detail. The starting point is geometry management, which controls the size and position of graphical widgets. The book goes on to describe the available widgets in depth, including chapters on buttons, listboxes, text widgets, scales, and more. Frames, windows and menus are fully explained. With the foundations in place, the second half turns to advanced topics such as creating custom widgets, binding to events, image manipulation, pipes and sockets, and Web programming. Appendices list options and default values for each widget, and give complete program listings for the examples. Readers of Mastering Perl/Tk will be impressed by its attention to detail. The authors also demonstrate the power of the Perl/Tk combination, with examples such as embedding OpenGL output in a Tk window, or fetching and displaying live content from the Web. It is an excellent resource for any Perl developer.--Tim AndersonRead More