in reply to Any GUI apps for Win32 or OSX implemented entirely in Perl

There is a distinction between programming languages and GUI libraries/Widget factories.

Perl is just a programming language, It has no GUI bindings of it's own, there are perl bindings for the popular GUI factories like TK/GTK/Wx/Qt, etc but they are not part of perl - just as Java is a language but requires something like Swing/AWT for GUI widgets or like C/C++ is just a language but requires libraries for TK/GTK/Wx/Qt, etc. It is just that Micro$oft tends to release the native GUI bindings as part of the core language because that is what "windows" programming is all about - GUI programming. As of late, with the advent of portable applications, we have begun to see GTK/Qt/Wx bindings written for the traditional win32 languages such as VC++, C#, .NET, VB, etc but their outreach is still in it's infancy.

Writing a GUI perl app is still a bit of a hassle as the GUI bindings for perl you prefer might not be available on the OS. For e.g. on most desktop *nixes, Qt/Gtk libraries are usually present by default but the perl bindings for Qt/Gtk aren't, it's even rarer to see GUI bindings for perl on something like Win32 (I don't know much about Macs, but I guess it's the same case there). You could ship the perl bindings for the GUI factory of your choice but then you need to take the different OSes/Platforms (win32 vs *nix) and architectures (32 vs 64 bit win32 for e.g.) into account and distribute the right bindings accordingly. You could simply present prerequisites for the end-user to be able to choose the right bindings, but then not all end-users are that clever.

Writing portable applications will always present problems, whether the language be perl or C or C++. Java does well here, but it kinda made a trade-off, choosing portability over speed.

perl -e '$,=$",$_=(split/\W/,$^X)[y[eval]]]+--$_],print+just,another,split,hack'er

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Re^2: Any GUI apps for Win32 or OSX implemented entirely in Perl
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 26, 2006 at 16:00 UTC
    I understand that GUI tookit is not part of a language. I was writing GtkPerl apps (commercial) for 3 years or more. I was writing Win32::GUI apps (commercial) too. I have no problems bundling perl interpreter and all necessary perl modules (including GUI toolkit-related) for each OS.

    I just wish to know whether anybody (except me) wrote any commercial GUI apps for windows that are written entirely in Perl (or apps that are written in C/C++ but embed Perl interpreter). Same for OSX.

    So, can anybody point me some apps on the market?
    Thanks again!

[reply]

      I've written ones for work, but only internal tools. They work well though. I also wrote a few you can download on my website. I compiled win32 binaries for them, but the scripts are also included (they may require a few tweaks to run, but nothing major. The scripts were written for perl2exe and may have a few hard coded paths that perl2exe needed to compile).

      All of my perl GUI apps are written using Tk. I've recently had some problems running Tk at all on OSX.

      Two Perl/Tk GUI apps I wrote:
      Bugfight : A simple evolution simulator
      Spew : A tetris clone where the board spins around and zooms in and out.


      -----------------------------------
      Washizu
      Odd Man In: Guns and Game Theory

[reply]
      I was trying to say that the lack of a consistent perl compatible GUI toolkit on win32 makes programmers refrain from writing win32 GUI applications in perl.

      The perl related tools and IDEs from Activestate, the Perl Dev Kit and Perl Studio, PerlNET, etc have a large perl code base.

      A search lists quite a few other commercial and freeware GUI apps written in perl/mostly TK.

      perl -e '$,=$",$_=(split/\W/,$^X)[y[eval]]]+--$_],print+just,another,split,hack'er
[reply]
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