Fwd: Re: [MacPerl] MacPerl & Tk Question

[Scrapsky@aol.com]

Peter,

I apologize for the sloppy email etiquette of this reply.  I thought I would
try out an internet service provider instead of going through work all the
time (you know the deal...I am sure it will show up in Dilbert somewhere).
 Anyway, the email utility that comes along with AOL 2.7 (I have a Q630 and
can't use AOL 3.0, yet) doesn't allow Reply Include very well (or at least I
haven't found the right incantation of keystrokes...).  That being said, on
with the rest of the show:


My apologies for putting my foot in my mouth about Tcl on the UNIX side.  I
hang my head in shame <:-(

I skimmed a little too fast past that section.  The other info which you gave
me was quite useful and I am glad you cleared up a few things for me.

Many thanks to the others who responded with your input - very helpful as
well.

Regards,
Scrapsky




---------------------
Forwarded message:
From:	pvhp@forte.com (Peter Prymmer)
Sender:	owner-mac-perl@iis.ee.ethz.ch
To:	Scrapsky@aol.com, mac-perl@iis.ee.ethz.ch, spored19@mail.idt.net
Date: 97-01-20 23:31:19 EST

mac-perl@iis.ee.ethz.ch
Scrapsky@aol.com
spored19@mail.idt.net

Re: [MacPerl] MacPerl & Tk Question

Scrapsky writes 19-JAN-1997 22:22:15.54

>Doug,
>
>I am thinking that we would have to contact the keeper of the pTk libraries
>and compile MacPerl with them.  Unfortunately, I don't have Codewarrior (or
>am up to speed with it...) to be of much help at the moment.
>
>The way I understand it for the UNIX side, you have to have Perl, Tcl, and
Tk
>together at the same time and then compile Perl to get them to work.  You
>only need Tcl for the extensions in it.  After Perl has been compiled, you
>can trash the Tcl stuff.  I am wondering if it works in a similar fashion on
>the Mac side?
>
>BTW, If you have any ideas about the MacPerl - Tk thing, I would be happy to
>here them as well.  Also, I went to the sun site and downloaded the latest
>version of Tcl/Tk.
>
>Thanks for your feedback.
>
>Matthias, Do you have any input on meshing MacPerl with Tk?
>
>Thanks,
>Scrapsky


Your understanding of the UNIX side is a bit mistaken. One does not need to 
have Tcl/Tk at all. Perl, MakeMaker, a library with functionality equivalent
to 
Xlib, and a C development environment (compiler and make tools) are all that 
are "required". On a Mac having MPW and dmake would be helpful...

There are several things to be wary of - the first and biggest is that
Nick Ing-Simmons' officially released Perl/Tk (Tk400.200.tar.gz and the patch

to get to 400.201) are based on Tcl/Tk version 4.0p3 which was the last
Tcl/Tk 
release *before* the big push to do cross-platform Tcl/Tk guis (primarily the

ports to MacOS and Windows) as in Tcl/Tk4.1 (and subsequent patch levels). 

(How the Mac version of Tcl/Tk handles calls to GUI functions that I myself
am 
 quite ignorant of - does it do native Mac calls or Mac-Xlib calls? I do not 
 know. I suspect that looking at the source code would prove quite 
 informative.)

The Tk perl extension is a self contained kit. (At more than 2.5 Megs gzipped

it is larger than the whole source code kit for perl!) It essentially
contains 
a snapshot of the Tcl/Tk 4.0p3 source code that has been run through an 
extensive collection of perl scripts to turn the C source code into perl XS 
code - plus a whole bunch of perl .pm module files.  During the compilation
on 
UNIX the libtk/libptk stuff is built from scratch then linked appropriately -

to perl (Tcl and Tk are not involved).

I would like to know where you came up with the idea that one needs Tcl and
can 
then trash it.  I really hope it was nothing that I wrote that mislead you.
My web page at:

  http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/ptkPORT.html 

mentions that having a port of Tcl/Tk to ones platform is "good" (since it 
demonstrates the feasability of having any form of Tk on one's platform) but
I 
am hoping that it does not leave you with the impression that it is
_required_.

Yes the Mac does indeed do Tcl/Tk - now on to the port of Perl/Tk:

 o There is a very active porting effort currently in progress to make 
   the Tcl/Tk 4.1 code amenable to Nick's "perlization process".
   I believe Nick intends to make one or two more final releases of the 
   Tk400.2xx line (based on Tk4.0p3) then move on to Tcl/Tk 4.1... in
earnest.

 o Ilya Zakharevich has already ported the Tk400.200 and Tk400.201 kits to
OS/2
   (this is currently the only known non-UNIX implementation of Perl/Tk).
   His experience is well worth paying close attention to: which header and 
   source files did he have to change?
   It is worth noting that Ilya made use of the XFree86 Xlib for OS/2.

You might wish to pose questions to Nick and/or Ilya on the ptk mailing list
- 
there certainly are folks there willing to discuss porting.

Good luck.

Peter Prymmer