Re: GUI on all platforms

There are quite a lot of GUI modules, most of them are cross-platform. Here comes a non-exhaustive list :

Tk Is by far the most common. It's a bit rough at the edges, but does the job.
Tcl::Tk is nearly identical to Tk, but somewhat faster. Why both exist is beyond my understanding though...
Gtk is the perl interface to GTK1 libraries. It's nicer than Tk, but harder to get running on Windows and MacOS X.
Gtk2 is the perl interface to the GTK2 library. It's very nice, but has the same problem than Gtk of course.
QT is the perl interface to the Tolltech QT C++ toolkit. It's pretty nice and equivalent to Gtk2.
wxPerl is the interface to the wxWidgets toolkit. wxWidget is a very cool library with a native look-and-feel on all platforms : windows, OS X, X11/Motif or X11/Gtk. It's a bit difficult to install and evolves rapidly, though it's a bit difficult to get on.
Tk::Zinc is a special beast : it's somewhat based upon Tk but it has great OpenGL capabilities and is very good looking, and fast. Try it!
There are platform-dependant wrappers too, like the Win32::Gui (the name says it all), CamelBones Obj-C wrapper for Mac OSX/Cocoa, etc.

Well that's all I think of at the moment, friends. If you want go the easy way, choose Tk; if you want something good-looking and very cross-platform, check wxPerl; if you need something graphically powerful Tk::Zinc is the best choice IMHO.

Comment on Re: GUI on all platforms

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: GUI on all platforms by vkon (Curate) on Apr 15, 2006 at 17:14 UTC
as a maintainer of Tcl::Tk module, I want to shed a light on your mention "Tcl::Tk is nearly identical to Tk, but somewhat faster. Why both exist is beyond my understanding though...". In few words, because perl/Tk was implemented in unusual (read: wrong) way To expand, usually other languages (ruby, python, etc) and other GUI libs (Gtk, QT, etc) do not include entire GUI lib into extension, while perl/Tk did. This leads to a problem of harder maintenance and harder incorporations of new features. I, personally, was stuch with lack of Unicode few years ago, and moving to Tcl::Tk was a must for me. Also another module on CPAN makes similar job but it do not follow perl/Tk syntax. On a different note - I was impressed on QT. Although it is not acceptable for me (due to $cost for commercial usage) I was impressed by its quality: QT on my Set-top-box, satellite receiver, based on Linux and having only 32Mb of memory, was unbeleiveable fast and lightweight and damn good... (compared to Gtk+)	[reply]
Re^3: GUI on all platforms by adamk (Chaplain) on Apr 15, 2006 at 21:17 UTC
Yes, but you can write off QT support in Perl. The QT 3 bindings are third-party and somewhat stale, and there's no evidence we are going to see QT 4 bindings. Even the Perl people INSIDE of TrollTech can't QT bindings, I've spoken to them.	[reply]
Re^4: GUI on all platforms by wazoox (Prior) on Apr 16, 2006 at 21:03 UTC
Why's that? What's gone wrong ? That's pretty sad news...	[reply]
Re^5: GUI on all platforms by adamk (Chaplain) on Apr 17, 2006 at 16:17 UTC
Re^2: GUI on all platforms by TGI (Parson) on Apr 17, 2006 at 16:04 UTC
You missed Prima. TGI says moo	[reply]
Re^3: GUI on all platforms by wazoox (Prior) on Apr 17, 2006 at 19:03 UTC
Well, I've said it's a "non-exhaustive list" :)	[reply]