Excellent questions. I'll attempt to answer them but as I
said in my review: I consider myself a rank beginner
with Perl/Tk. Having made that clear, unfortunately, the answer is:
It depends . . .
My experience. I've only used Perl/Tk in about 5
programs, all prior to receiving this book. I haven't
programmed any new Perl/Tk since receiving it. I've flipped
through the entire book, examined the available features
and examples and have come to the conclusion that yes,
based on what I've seen/read, I can develop applications
with a professional look/feel.
Now, you may not necessarily agree with what I consider
having a professional look/feel means. There are some
crappy looking examples in this book, just as Nancy Walsh's
previous book Learning Perl/Tk was full of crappy
looking examples. Keep in mind that the purpose of most of
these examples are not to imitate a VB look, but to
illustrate basic ways to vary the appearance of Perl/Tk
widgets. OTOH, there are some very nice examples in the new
book. My experience so far with Perl/Tk have taught me that
the fewer options/attributes you take advantage of, the
crappier your results will look.
I think using Perl/Tk is alot like using HTML to build a
web page. The simpler your HTML, the crappier it will look.
If you have a well developed feel/talent for graphical
design and/or layout your chances for ending up with a
professional look/feel will be significantly higher than if
you don't. I developed a Web Calendar application for my
University and my intitial pages were very crude and simple
looking. At that point, I turned the application over to a
Graphics Design Artist in Web Services. The results were
amazing, and beyond my capabilities. Sure, I could've come
up with something sparse, sleek, and functional (I do think
of myself as artistic, just not in a desktop publishing
way), but I would've never come up with what she did.
Having seen what she's done, I could emulate her and come
up with a similar look. But I ramble.
I believe that all of the necessary tools are there,
whether or not you attain your goal depends on your will,
talent, and ability to use them. It takes a good deal of
effort to create apps with a Windows look. Perl/Tk is not
Visual Basic.
I suggest that you visit a major bookstore near you and
browse through a copy of the book. Especially check out
Appendix C: Complete Program Listings. Each program
references a figure/chapter to check out. If you see a
look/feel you like, check out the code that produces it.
--Jim | [reply] |
I have written some nice looking front-ends using Perl/Tk. It is certainly easy to use and very quick to develop. As far as how professional your GUI will look - well, that's really up to how much time you are willing to put into the design.If you want to see one of my better works, you can find it here. This was a front end to a class project we did for a real-time oscilloscope. We used RTOS Linux component in conjunction with a Keithley DAQ card. The link above is just a sample GUI with dummy data. Please feel free to play around with it. I must add one more thing. In my Tk experience, I've discovered that even though the code will work on any Perl/Tk enabled OS (btw, I tested this on Windows and RedHat), you MUST specify ALL parameters to EVERY widget in order to achieve the same look on different platforms. So, if that is a concern for you, please take this statement dear to your heart. I know for a fact that my program does not do a good enough job - I saw major differences b/w Windows and RedHat. I hope this helps. | [reply] |
Your oscope code is just great. A very nice example. There is a minor typo on line 87 - the word "lable" should be "-lable".
Diskcrash
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Actually it's Perl/Tk (or perhaps Tk) that changed. It used used to work witout the dash...
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gri6507 was last here two years ago ... the links is from 14 years ago ... try contacting gri6507 a different way
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