Re: [MacPerl] GUI with Perl??

[pudge@pobox.com (Chris Nandor)]

At 21.22 97/5/6, Jacob Miller wrote:
>I realize that perl is just a (semi) simple scripting language

This is really a meta-perl (as opposed to a MacPerl) response, but it
addresses what I think are wide-ranging misconceptions about Perl.

Perl is, IMO, *not* "just a simple scripting language."  It is a scripting
language, but it is not "just" a scripting language and by no means is it
simple.

Larry Wall designed Perl with the beginner and the expert in mind.  He
wanted it to be easy for a beginner to write Hello World, but complex
enough for an expert to write a full-fledged program.  Many "gurus" have
boasted that any UNIX program that can be written in C can be written more
quickly and will run just as fast in Perl.  I wouldn't call that simple or
"just scripting."

As to GUI: unfortunately, as others have said, there is no cross-platform
GUI solution in Perl.  However, there are som possibilities:

* As mentioned, there is some built-in GUI functionality to MacPerl.
* There is Tk.  Bleah.
* You could build a web-based interface, which I like for a lot of reasons.
Not a full-fledged GUI, but lots of flexibility, and extremely easy to
build if you already know HTML and forms.
* There are the extended GUI modules (in alpha) from Matthias:

>At a time when nobody seems to believe in MacOS anymore, I thought I'd
>do a
>little anticyclical move and bring you ... (drum roll, please)
>
> The MacPerl GUI modules.
>
>ftp://err.ethz.ch/pub/neeri/MacPerl/Beta/PerlGUI_24Mar97.sit.bin
>
>Some familiarity with Inside Macintosh is probably advised, but you can
>also play with the examples. Offers for documentation accepted.


Have fun,

--
Chris Nandor                 pudge@pobox.com                 http://pudge.net/
%PGPKey=('B76E72AD',[1024,'08 24 09 0B CE 73 CA 10  1F F7 7F 13 81 80 B6 B6'])
#=============================================================================
I will not sell land in Florida.
                --Bart Simpson
#=============================================================================



***** Want to unsubscribe from this list?
***** Send mail with body "unsubscribe" to mac-perl-request@iis.ee.ethz.ch