Learning Perl/Tk is a tutorial for Perl/Tk, the extension to Perl for creating graphical user interfaces. With Tk, Perl programs can be window-based rather than command-line based, with buttons, entry fields, listboxes, menus, and scrollbars. Originally developed for the Tcl language, the Perl port of the Tk toolkit liberates Perl programmers from the world of command-line options, STDIN, and STDOUT, allowing them to build graphical, event-driven applications for both Windows and UNIX. This book is aimed at Perl novices and experts alike. It explains the reasoning behind event-driven applications and drills in guidelines on how to best design graphical applications. It teaches how to implement and configure each of the Perl/Tk graphical elements step-by-step. Special attention is given to the geometry managers, which are needed to position each button, menu, label and listbox in the window frame. Although this book does not teach basic Perl, anyone who has written even the simplest Perl program should be able to learn Tk from this book. The writing is breezy and informal, and gets right to the point of what you need to know and why. The book is rife with illustrations that demonstrate how each element is drawn and how its configuration options affect its presentation. Learning Perl/Tk is for every Perl programmer who would like to implement simple, easy-to-use graphical interfaces.

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Learning Perl/Tk Review,  May 16 2000
Submitted by Tony Lanier   [Respond | View]




Learning Perl/Tk Review,  December 05 1999
Submitted by Flounder   [Respond | View]



I have had this book a few months and love it.
If you want to develop GUI with perl and TK this book is a must have. Strangly enough I don't just use this book as a reference to using TK in Perl but in Python and TCL also.

I give it 10 out of 10 stars.


Learning Perl/Tk Review,  October 27 1999
Submitted by Neil Tevepaugh   [Respond | View]



I too found that this book, first edition Jan 1999, suffers a number of errors. In addition, not nearly enough examples were provided. If the author had created such examples perhaps she would have discovered some of errors in her presentation of Tk with Perl. I am using Perl 5.005_03, build 518 on Windows NT 4.0 with Tk 800.015. On my system, the description in the book of the xview & yview commands do not match my installed programs. For example: xviewSroll( 1, "units"); in the book is implemented as xview( "scroll", 1, "units"); The same is true of the xviewMoveto and yviewMoveto. In addition, the functions described under Selection methods do not correspond to my implementation. selectionSet(0); should be selection( 'set, 0 ); The same is true of the remaining selection args. I am a fan of O'Reilly and own a number of their books. Usually they do a good job. To me it looks like Nancy Walsh got her information about Tk from the same source as Stephen Lidie the author of the Perl/Tk Pocket Reference also from O'Reilly. It too has the same errors about xview, yview, and selection. It seems that a number of function arguments are being appended to the function names. I'm sure there are others yet to be discovered. On the other hand, O'Reilly's book "Perl in a Nutshell" gets it right. Perhaps Stephen and Nancy should have a meeting with Ellen, Stephen and Nathan (authors of the Nutshell book).


Learning Perl/Tk Review,  October 26 1999
Submitted by uzo   [Respond | View]



I am very disappointed with the book, way too many errors. I was looking forward to writing a book review on this, but I will wait till the second one comes out. I request my name be added in the list of those who will get second edition for free. ;) Uzo


Learning Perl/Tk Review,  October 13 1999
Submitted by Doug Claflin   [Respond | View]



The January 1999 First Edition had a number of complaints about details in the book e.g. double quotes missing from "Hello World". I have the newer printing (March 1999). These problems appear to have been corrected. To date I have found the presentation to be orderly and logical. Of course, I have some minor nits. First, some indication of a style guide (like which colors to use for certain widgets, when a frame is desirable etc.) would be nice. Another is the mixing of object methods and options together without making the distinction clear. I recommend Perl/Tk. Doug Claflin dclaflin@concentric.net


Learning Perl/Tk Review,  September 27 1999
Submitted by ron smith   [Respond | View]



Like a number of the reviews, I am of a dual mind on this volume. First it is the best (ok, so it is the ONLY) volume on how to get started using the perl/Tk libraries, and it is highly useful to one who has not done much with Tk. The volume leads one through most of the common widgets which would be useful to create simple GUI applications to replace the common script based interface we all know and love/hate. However, this volume is, by far, the most error filled of any O'Reilly book, with the bulk of the supplied examples not functional as written, and much of the explanation just plain wrong. I was only able to get past certain problems by rereading the "learning" book repeatedly, comparing it to the desktop reference (which is excellent by the way) and studying the pod in the library distribution. All I can say is thank heavens that the library authors aligned with the perl philosophy that things should be highly regular. I own many hundreds of dollars of O'Reilly volumes, and while I am not sorry I bought this book when I did, the disturbing lack of editorial quality will leave me forever cautious about buying another O'Reilly first edition (I mean, once bitten, etc). I would like to add my name to the long list of dissapointed purchasers who want a free upgrade. I would agree wholeheartedly with the opinions that this subject is sufficiently interesting to deserve other volumes discussing some of the more difficult aspects of GUI design and application building. For example, what is the best way to load a file into the text widget? Is there different techniques which are useful for different size files? (The answer is yes.) Why is this so? Uh, however, I'll wait for the third printing... Also, the actual libraries are written with a specific framework in mind, and it would be highly useful to be better able to understand that framework in some detail (I mean, what does "ADVERTISE" *DO*) so one can avoid some of the novice traps.


Learning Perl/Tk Review,  August 27 1999
Submitted by Clifford Lloyd   [Respond | View]



Learning Perl/Tk is a good book to learn the basics of how to write code about gui objects in isolation. For example, the book will show you how to draw and interact with a scrollbar on a window.

This book unfortunately does not show you how to write gui applications. There is very little discussion on how to deal with events that trigger activities on multiple gui objects, no discussion on how to deal with the communication between multiple windows, and very little in dealing with composite objects like combo boxes, directory lists, and etc.

If you do not know Perl/Tk this is good book to learn the concepts. You will not be able to write gui applications.

If Nancy Walsh could write another book called Advanced Perl/Tk. Showing how events can trigger multiple activities on different objects, how supplied composite objects work, give more examples of creating composite objects, how Multiple windows would work, and show examples of complete gui applications.
This would fill the void on how to create Perl/Tk applications.


Learning Perl/Tk Review,  July 25 1999
Submitted by Brian W.   [Respond | View]



I found this book to be an excellent intorduction
to perl/Tk. It is also helpful in introducing
novice Perl hackers to some of the more advanced
features of the language.

On the other hand, I was left chomping at the bit
for more. Many of my early projects were
discarded as I realized that more effective versions
of them were available with the Tk module.

Oh well. Hopefully a more in-depth perlTk book is
in the works? Maybe one which includes further
coverage of composite widgets, or making a coherent
program out of all these parts... I know that much
of this info is available in the POD's, but each
POD tends to vary in quality. Besides, it's nice
to have something new to read on the bus :)


Learning Perl/Tk Review,  July 19 1999
Submitted by Gabe D.   [Respond | View]



Just bought your Perl/Tk book. It is well written and very useful. I am well-versed in writing batch perl scripts but I never did any GUI programming. Within 2-weeks of reading your Perl/Tk book I was able to begin adding a GUI interface to the scripts. Perl/Tk is going to get very big (usage-wise). At this point I am looking for more information. Just as you have many varities of Perl books, more Perl/Tk books are need; some to re-teach the basic concepts from different viewpoints and some for additional material. Now that there is "real" textbook for Perl/Tk the fun and wonder of it will be found very quickly.


Learning Perl/Tk Review,  May 04 1999
Submitted by T Edwald   [Respond | View]



It is always discouraging when the very first
'Hello World' program in a book fails on a
syntax error (needs quotes). I have now tried
the program on three different Linux installations
of Perl/Tk (800.014), but they all fail on
this first program with a 'undefined subroutine'
message. I bought the book only last night,
without realizing that the January version
is obsolete given the huge errata.
I am disappointed in this book so far, this is
not up to what I have come to expect from O'Reilly.
[I have bought over 40 of their books and found
them superb with one or two exceptions only.]
If this were software, I would demand an upgrade.
Can one trade in these obsolete versions?
-or am I stuck with this $32.95+tx turkey?

If you want to buy this book, make sure you
get a recent revision.



Learning Perl/Tk Review,  April 28 1999
Submitted by Phil   [Respond | View]



There is a frightful amount of errata for those of
us who bought this book on faith back in January.
Honestly, it's quite trying on one's soul to learn
something new with 8 pages of errata. Fortunately,
later editions will fix this, I am sure. I just
wish O'Reilly would allow those of us with the first
printing to exchange it for a revised printing.

*nudge nudge*



Learning Perl/Tk Review,  March 26 1999
Submitted by Gary Strait   [Respond | View]



As one with perl experience, but no Tk experience,
I found that this book gave me a very good intro to
Perl/Tk and allowed me to get started quickly building
a fancy interface with lots of sophisticated
features. The only example I tried from the book
was the "Hello World" example, where I immediately
recognized the need for quotes (I ran this to prove that
I had Tk setup and working), from there I just
read the book until I was ready to build my first real
interface.

Not starting simple, I went right for "One
Scrollbar, Multiple Widgets" (page138), where I
found one problem not noted in the errata. The
yviewMoveto method described on page 133 and used
in the example on page 140 doesn't work on my
AIX system (it's undefined). After some searching,
I find this works correctly if the example
$list->yviewMoveto($top);
is replaced with
$list->yview(moveto=>$top);
Is this an error, or is there something unique
about Tk on AIX?


Learning Perl/Tk Review,  March 24 1999
Submitted by Lawrence A. Weber   [Respond | View]



True to the name "Learning Perl/Tk" this book is a great fast-start into Perl/Tk. However, it only covers the very basic components of the Tk module. Most of these basic "widgets" are fundementally the same, but this book allocates a chapter to cover each one in complete detail. This results in a lot of redundant text. There are numerous standard composite widgets that need documented. These are not even mentioned in the book.


Learning Perl/Tk Review,  March 18 1999
Submitted by Robin Trew   [Respond | View]



A very good choice of topic, but some apparent glitches in editorial process.

The target audience could well be discouraged by the fact that BOTH of the first two pieces of code which they are asked to run contain elementary syntax errors and fail, generating syntax error messages.

1. The "Hello World" example on Page 5 (Jan 99 Edition):

$mw->title( Hello World );

fails because the string is unquoted.

2. The "see if you already have the Tk module installed" one line on page 5 (same edition):

perl -e 'use Tk'

Also fails on Win32/ActiveState installations, for which it should read

perl -e "use Tk"

I appreciate that editors can not be expected to test all the code in a book, but perhaps there is a case for at least checking the syntax of "Hello World" examples.




Learning Perl/Tk Review,  February 26 1999
Submitted by Michael Holve (mike@eunuchs.org)   [Respond | View]



As usualy, another classic O'Reilly book and a
must have. This one sits next to the four feet of
other ORA books I own!


Learning Perl/Tk Review,  January 18 1999
Submitted by Steven Hirsch   [Respond | View]



This is one of the most-needed books in the open-source
universe. I'm disappointed to see the publication date
continually sliding. When will it be shipping?



Learning Perl/Tk Review,  January 11 1999
Submitted by Bob Duggins   [Respond | View]



Your sample chapter is really good. I have a much
better grasp of the pack geometry manager.

FYI:

Figure 2-22 is not an example of ipadx => 10,
ipady => 10 options of the pack geometry
manager, but is a duplicate of Figure 2-23,
and demonstrates the padx/pady options.




Learning Perl/Tk Review,  December 15 1998
Submitted by Enthusiastic and would like these additi   [Respond | View]



This may sound like a salespitch but I read the sample chapter as well. I am so glad somebody actually is writing a book on the Tk interface to perl. I have been programming in it for about 6 months and it has been a bit frustrating at times to use some of the widgets (the way one wants) since the only info previously was the FAQ and the newsgroup and then again who wants to keep searching for answers for each and every qirk of Tk...

I've like to see some good coverage of text tag manipulation (some people want to write editors)

Also, how to write modules for composite widgets. Particularly, how to pass widget params. (ie write a module for some popup and how to pass params between it and a main program). Its different slightly for widgets as I heard.




Learning Perl/Tk Review,  July 17 1998
Submitted by Frank O'Connor   [Respond | View]



This book has so many announced mistakes that it
SHOULD NOT BE in the bookstores. The multitude of unconfirmed mistakes add to the impression of the author being little more than a novice. There is little in the book that can not be found easily on the Internet. I would welcome a professional
effort which included details on interfacing to
databases.

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