in reply to Program design with GUI interface

I have a script that does pretty much what you require. It was written some time ago so doesn't have best practices like use strict but that would be easy to fix. Here it is.

$SIG{CHLD} = "IGNORE"; use Tk; use integer; $rlApps = [map{[m<^(.*):(.*)>m]} <DATA>]; $longestName = 0; foreach (@$rlApps) { my $l = length $_->[0]; $longestName = $l if $l > $longestName; } chomp($hostName = `/usr/bin/hostname`); $ENV{DISPLAY} = $hostName . $ENV{DISPLAY} if $ENV{DISPLAY} eq ":0.0"; $bgColour = "LightSteelBlue3"; %buttonColours = ( "-background" => "grey35", "-foreground" => "yellow2", "-activebackground" => "grey45", "-activeforeground" => "yellow", "-disabledforeground" => "grey55"); $mainWin = MainWindow->new( "-background" => $bgColour); $mainWin->title("xlaunch"); $mainWin->resizable(0, 0); $appsSelectFrame = $mainWin->Frame( "-relief" => "ridge", "-background" => $bgColour, "-borderwidth" => 2)->pack( "-side" => "top", "-fill" => "y", "-expand" => 1); foreach (0 .. $#{$rlApps}) { my $buttonName = $rlApps->[$_]->[0] . "Button"; $$buttonName = $appsSelectFrame->Button( "-text" => $rlApps->[$_]->[0], %buttonColours, "-width" => $longestName)->pack( "-side" => "top", "-padx" => 5, "-pady" => 5); $$buttonName->configure( "-command" => [\&invokeApp, $_]); } $controlButtonFrame = $mainWin->Frame( "-relief" => "flat", "-background" => $bgColour, "-borderwidth" => 2)->pack( "-side" => "top"); $controlButtonFrame->Button( "-text" => "Quit", %buttonColours, "-command" => sub {exit;})->pack( "-side" => "right", "-padx" => 5, "-pady" => 5); MainLoop(); sub invokeApp { my $appSub = shift; my $cmd = $rlApps->[$appSub]->[1]; my $pid; if($pid = fork) { return; } elsif(defined($pid)) { exec $cmd; } else { die "Fork error: $!\n"; } } __END__ Acrobat Reader:/usr/local/bin/acroread CGM Viewer:/usr/openwin/bin/xterm -sb -sl 500 -title "CGM Viewer" -e / +ogis00/app/bin/cgm_viewer Petrobank:/usr/openwin/bin/xterm -sb -sl 500 -title "Petrobank" -e /og +is00/app/bin/petrobank Geolog:/usr/openwin/bin/xterm -sb -sl 500 -title "Geolog" -e /ogis00/a +pp/bin/geolog Netscape:/usr/dt/bin/netscape WebPlot:/usr/openwin/bin/xterm -sb -sl 500 -title "WebPlot" -e /ogis00 +/app/bin/webplot Xgeo:/usr/openwin/bin/xterm -sb -sl 500 -title "Xgeo" -e /ogis00/app/b +in/xgeo ZMAP:/usr/openwin/bin/xterm -sb -sl 500 -title "ZMAP" -e /ogis00/app/b +in/zmap Calculator:/usr/dt/bin/dtcalc File Manager:/usr/dt/bin/dtfile Xterm:/usr/openwin/bin/xterm -sb -sl 2000

I hope you find it useful.

Cheers,

JohnGG