Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi monks. I'm looking for a visual perl appliaction (free that is). I did read what people wrote about it here at the site and it looks good. I use to develop in VB and .NET but I moved to linux so I need that change. Thanks fellow monks.

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Re: Visual Perl for Unix/Linux
by g0n (Priest) on Jan 18, 2006 at 10:29 UTC
    From looking at the other replies, and thinking about VB, the problem splits into two:

    • A form designer
    • An IDE

    I've had a fair amount of success using ZooZ (free from CPAN) for designing Tk forms. There are a number of IDEs available that you can use with perl, but I don't use any of them so I can't comment on what's best (or free).

    --------------------------------------------------------------

    "If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing."

    John Brunner, "The Shockwave Rider".

Re: Visual Perl for Unix/Linux
by dorward (Curate) on Jan 18, 2006 at 08:36 UTC

    What is a "visual perl application"? If you mean a WIMP tool for generating UIs then you might want to look at Glade which generates GTK GUIs. You can then use GTK2 to write Perl that uses that GUI.

    WIMP: Window Icon Pointer Mouse

      I do think the OP ment something like optiperl, vperl or ActivePerlProStudio. (update:but than free)

      What i use is the eclipse whith the E-P-I-C plugin (great for it's cvs implementation, the editor .. well ... you could step over to gvim :) ), but you might also consider this free tool

      "We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise." - Larry Wall.
Re: Visual Perl for Unix/Linux
by vennirajan (Friar) on Jan 18, 2006 at 08:12 UTC
    You can use TK modules which is available in the CPAN library. But, you need to write code to create and handle the controls. Whereas, in VB and .NET you can simply draw the controls. Here, you need to write code for each and every activities on the control.Have a look at the Perl TK (Perl Tool Kit) modules in CPAN library. This is similar like the GTK.

    Regards,
    S.Venni Rajan.
    "A Flair For Excellence."
                    -- BK Systems.
Re: Visual Perl for Unix/Linux
by glasswalk3r (Friar) on Jan 18, 2006 at 12:30 UTC

    If you need to developed general Perl programs (and not only graphical interfaces) and is looking for something like an IDE I would recomend this article here: http://mamchenkov.net/wordpress/2004/05/10/vim-for-perl-developers/ and then check the perl-support.vim webpage.

    Both Vim and perl-support.vim are free software.

    Alceu Rodrigues de Freitas Junior
    ---------------------------------
    "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Sir Winston Churchill
Re: Visual Perl for Unix/Linux
by jonadab (Parson) on Jan 18, 2006 at 13:38 UTC
    I use to develop in VB and .NET but I moved to linux so I need that change

    This is a non-Perl solution, but you might consider lookin into Java.

    Java is in many respects inferior to Perl (what isn't?), but it is still a much better language than VB, and it is particularly good for creating graphical user interfaces, which is Perl's biggest weakness, and which I presume is most of what you're interested in doing if you were formerly using VB.

    The freeness (in the Stallmanesque sense) of Java is a subject of some debate, but if your main interest is in not needing to pay money, it will fit that bill nicely, from what I am given to understand.