[MacPerl] Re: Mac port of perl/Tk

[pvhp@forte.com (Peter Prymmer)]

jjohnson@bassettlaudi.com, mac-perl@iis.ee.ethz.ch
Subj:	Re: Mac port of perl/Tk

Justin Johnson wrote:

> Howdy everyone,
> 
> I've searched the archives on this question, but can't come up with
> anything later than 1995, so here goes: I'm looking for the perl/Tk port
> for the Mac. I've seen written references to it (most notably in Advanced
> Perl Programming), but God help me if I can actually find it.

You can find the latest Tk extension to perl (as opposed to Tcl/Tk) 
in Nick Ing-Simmons directory on CPAN:

     http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/authors/Nick_Ing-Simmons/
 
> The problem might be that I don't know enough about Tk: I was under the
> impression that perl/Tk for the Mac is different from Tcl/Tk (perl/Tk has
> had the Tcl stripped out and a wrapper for perl5 added). Can I use the

The Perl/Tk build process on Unix and NT takes source code from a specially 
prepared Tk distribution and runs a Tcl2Perl conversion script over the source 
code (creating XS code where necessary), then runs a compiler and linker over 
the resultant tree (consisting of a mixture of .pm files, .xs files, 
.c and .h files).   Nick makes the "specially prepared Tk distributions" and 
there are ones that correspond to Tcl/Tk v4 and Tcl/Tk v8 available on CPAN.

> had the Tcl stripped out and a wrapper for perl5 added). Can I use the
> normal Mac Tcl/Tk port?

Yes you certainly can.  However, it would probably be better for performance 
reasons not to bother with perl if you decide to run Tcl on your Mac.

On the other hand, if you want a MacPerl GUI then consider the fine toolbox 
modules and other bits of Mac-specific-Perl that work quite well (and offer 
more of a native Mac look and feel).  See the following URL for more 
information:

  http://www.ptf.com/macperl/ptf_book/HTML/325.GUI.html

Of course anyone is free to take Nick's code and Matthias' code and hack them 
into working on a Mac....

Hope that helps.

Peter Prymmer


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