Ok, understood. If I change items to:

    my $menuitem = [ [command => 'Open', -image => $compound], [comman
+d => 'close'] ];
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Then the left edge of the ? lines up with the left edge of close - that is, there is only as much space to the left of either entry as I would expect. Indeed, if I add an edit menu with two plain entries:

    $menuitem = [ [command => 'Open'], [command => 'close'] ];
    $menubar->cascade(-label => 'Edit', -tearoff => 0, -menuitems => $
+menuitem);
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I see the same amount of space to the left of the entries there.

However, I can see your issue - the space to the left is excessive and other programs are capable of putting an icon there. Problem understood. :) No answer yet, but I'll look into it later tonight if you haven't an answer before then.

Had look at the widget demo and found a solution but other problems appeared also.

The solution is to use "-hidemargin =>1" option on each menuitem.

I tried this option before posting my query, but apparently if we don't use "-hidemargin =>1" on all menuitems under a menubar entry, it just won't work. So it seems that indivdual menuitems can't be controlled - they all eiter have a margin or they don't. Well, I can live with that.

But now there are two other problems:

1) On the Checkbutton menuitem, the "hook" no longer appears.
2) The image from Tk::ToolBar doesn't appear properly before menuitem is highlighted. Same happens if I create own Tk::Image widget and use that instead.

How could we solve these issues?

#!/usr/bin/perl -s

use Tk;
use Tk::ToolBar;
use Tk::Compound;
use strict;

my $mw = MainWindow->new();


#Load images from Tk::ToolBar.
my $tb = $mw->ToolBar();
$tb->destroy();
my $compound = $mw->Compound;
#How do we place this image to far left in menu?
#Answer:use -hidemargin option.
$compound->Image( -image => 'acthelp16', -anchor => 'w' );

$compound->Space( -width => 8 );
$compound->Text( -text => "Open", -underline => 0 );
$compound->Space( -width => 28 );
my $menubar = $mw->Menu( -type => 'menubar', );

my $c2 = $mw->Compound;
$c2->Space(-width => 40);

#my $menuitem = [ [ command => Open, -image => $compound ] ];
$menubar->cascade(
  -label     => 'File',
  -tearoff   => 0,
  -menuitems => [ 
         #All menuitem must have hidemargin enabled for it to work.
         [ Button => 'Open', -image => $compound, -hidemargin => 1, ],
         [ Button => '~Quit', -command => [ destroy => $mw ], -hidemar
+gin => 1 ],
         '-',
         #But now the checkbutton doesn't appear anymore..
         [ Checkbutton => 'Checkthing', -hidemargin => 1, -image=>$c2,
+ -compound=>'left' ],
                ]
);

$mw->configure( -menu => $menubar );
MainLoop;
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