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Perl/Tk is the marriage of the Tk graphical toolkit with Perl, the powerful programming language used primarily for system administration, web programming, and database manipulation. With Perl/Tk, you can build Perl programs with an attractive, intuitive GUI interface with all the power of Perl behind it.
Mastering Perl/Tk is the "bible" of Perl/Tk: It's not only a great book for getting started, but the best reference for learning the techniques of experienced Perl/Tk programmers. The first half of the book contains the basics on how to use Perl/Tk, and then branches out into advanced applications with a series of extensive program examples. The result is a book accessible for novices, and invaluable for experienced programmers ready to learn the next step in the elegant and effective use of Perl/Tk. The book includes: - An introduction to each of the basic Perl/Tk widgets and geometry managers - A dissection of the MainLoop, including how to use callbacks and bindings effectively - Coverage of the Tix widgets, an extended set of widgets that are a part of the standard Perl/Tk distribution - Working with images in Perl/Tk, including bitmaps, pixmaps, photos, and how to compose a compound image type - How to create custom mega-widgets in Perl/Tk, both composite and derived - Handling interprocess communication with Perl/Tk, both with standard Unix utilities (pipes and sockets) and with the send command designed for direct communication between Tk applications - Developing your own Tk widget in the C language - Examples of web applications written with Perl/Tk and the LWP library - The book also includes appendices on installing Perl/Tk, a complete quick-reference for each standard widget, and listings of all the extended examples in the book.
List of contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Hello, Perl/Tk
Chapter 2: Geometry Management
Chapter 3: Fonts
Chapter 4: Button, Checkbutton, and Radiobutton Widgets
Chapter 5: Label and Entry Widgets
Chapter 6: The Scrollbar Widget
Chapter 7: The Listbox Widget
Chapter 8: The Text, TextUndo,and ROText Widgets
Chapter 9: The Canvas Widget
Chapter 10: The Scale Widget
Chapter 11: Frame, MainWindow,and Toplevel Widgets
Chapter 12: The Menu System
Chapter 13: Miscellaneous Perl/Tk Methods
Chapter 14: Creating Custom Widgets in Pure Perl/Tk
Chapter 15: Anatomy of the MainLoop
Chapter 16: User Customization
Chapter 17: Images and Animations
Chapter 18: A Tk Interface Extension Tour
Chapter 19: Interprocess Communicationwith Pipes and Sockets
Chapter 20: IPC with send
Chapter 21: C Widget Internals
Chapter 22: Perl/Tk and the Web
Chapter 23: Plethora of pTk Potpourri
Appendix A: Installing Perl/Tk
Appendix B: Options and Default Valuesfor Each Widget
Appendix C: Complete Program Listings
Colophon
About the author
Steve Lidie has spent decades consulting, programming and administering systems from Apple, CDC, DEC, HP, IBM, Microsoft and SGI. Author of the Perl/Tk Pocket Reference and graduate of Lehigh University, he currently manages the University's large-scale scientific computing complex, and occasionally writes Tk articles for The Perl Journal and PerlMonth.
Nancy Walsh has been involved with Perl (and Perl/Tk) since 1996. She received a Computer Science degree from the University of Arizona in 1993, and currently works as a Principal Consultant for XOR, Inc. doing J2EE and Java work on various projects. Nancy has taught several Perl/Tk Tutorials at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference and is also the author of Learning Perl/Tk.
Summary
Perl/Tk is the marriage of the Tk graphical toolkit with Perl, the powerful programming language used primarily for system administration, Web programming, and database manipulation. With this text you should be able to build Perl programs with an attractive, intuitive GUI interface.
