The best widget set to create a GUI program in Perl
Suggestions are welcome in which widget toolkit is the easiest to learn and use to create a GUI program in Perl. Most people suggest using Java and Swing as the easiest and the most accomplished language and widget toolkit to use. Yes, I could use Java and Swing but I would prefer to use Perl.
I blog about Perl, but also write alot of Perl programs
This depends on what you want. Simplest is probably Tk, and it will (mostly) run on anything that runs Perl, but it's not as slick as the others and definitely doesn't integrate well with the OS (as all widgets are self-rendered). Gtk, Win32 or QT are the exact opposite, they'll integrate with the OS, but are not as simple or portable. For a good in-between, Wx gets a lot of praise lately.
I always found that Perl is lacking a good and well integrated GUI (like Java/Swing).
After all many programs need a GUI in front of them.
Apparently nobody of the 'big' Perl heads seems to care much about this lack (not even within the very ambitious Perl6 plans), although they do care about the popularity of Perl. I think that the lack of popularity has a lot to do with the lack of good GUI. But then again, I could be wrong.
Oh I use Tk because it is portable, but boy does that look dated!
WxPerl is well documented and sophisticated. I have used it on windows and linux for a few years now.
The prima gui kit is very good as well. Might be a bit friendlier in some ways.
If you have a particular favourite gui lib you could always try wrapping it with Inline or SWIG. Definitely not the quickest way to get going though!
http://search.cpan.org/search?query=gui&mode=all
is a good place to start digging.
That's because one of the major usages for Perl is providing the glue between the web and a database. These types of programs don't need a GUI, so it's not a high priority.
Hi Mike
A great deal can be done with HTML. It's OS-independent, etc,etc.
I guess it just doesn't have the status of the above-mentioned :-).
The Padre team seems to have done a lot with Wx. However I can't get Wx working properly on my Macbookpro no matter what I do, so I lean away from that.
I guess the way I'd approach this I'd write a front end agnostic server, mock it up with HTML and javascript and then build a front end on the OS system tools of choice. I'm really thinking the idea of OS independent widgets is just not working for me.
What about GTK (2)? I remember using it from C something like 10 years ago (do'h) and it did the job very well.
afaik, it also exists for Window$
Thanks for the suggestions, I've looked at Wx, Qt and GTK and thought about HTML, Javascript, etc.
Most of the time I want a simple application that allows me to display results from what is originally a command based application.
One thing that puts me off HTML and Javascript is the difficulty in debugging such applications and I always get bogged in trying to get HTML, CSS, Javascript to draw a dialog which would look like something I could knock up in a matter of seconds using VB. The forms, tables, etc that I create always seem to do there own thing and end up in the wrong place. And when I eventually manage to get it right in Firefox, it looks different in Internet Explorer. If anybody has any suggestions on what's the best way of cracking this problem I would appreciate it.
I shall certainly have another look at Wx though.