in reply to Visual Perl

Just to be clear: Do you want to create dynamic information design like graphs or maps where users can input data and have it respond on the fly? Or, are you looking to create detailed display illustrations/art?

I don't think Perl/Tk will help you much since it's more for GUI design. (At least it's a lot more than you seem to need.) Other far more enlightened monks will be able to answer your question better than I but off the top of my head maybe read up on GD or writing SVG files using Perl. I'm looking to work with SVG files and there seem to be a number of modules that would be helpful. Since it's XML you would be able to work with the data in a way that's pretty accessible. — Maybe that could work for you?

Again, I think a few more details about the kind of graphics you're looking to create would be helpful.

Good luck!
"...the adversities born of well-placed thoughts should be considered mercies rather than misfortunes." — Don Quixote

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Re^2: Visual Perl
by raybies (Chaplain) on Oct 18, 2010 at 18:02 UTC

    I'm not sure I can be entirely clear. I'm discovering that the moment I decide "This is what I want..." and then I find it, I start to think, "Boy! Now if only it had this feature too." :)

    Right now I'm really struggling with a portable way to visually display information. It would be nice if I could take some feedback from the display once it was created, like say, a visual merge tool might employ. That sort of level of control. Graphics are not that important at this point, but then I usually throw out that possibility altogether when I approach a problem, due to the fact that perl's so text/data centric.

    I wonder if there's a convenient table of the possible visual tools, their portability across systems, their feature limitations and such. I found myself digging through a lot of libraries but couldn't tell if, for example, Wx was coming or going, in terms of adoption, etc. And I'm curious if google's doing anything interesting in this arena as well with their new OS/aps... but that's mostly me getting sidetracked. :)

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      You say "a portable way to visually display information" and "Graphics are not that important at this point". No doubt I don't understand you because those seem contradictory to me. Can you clarify?

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        By "graphics" I mean display of bitmaps, pictures, vector images and 3d models, etc.

        I'm very interested in visualizing information in windows, tables, text boxes that can be selected and extracted and controled, but I don't need hi-performance graphics.

        So graphically there is some display dependencies--as once something goes to a display there are physical characteristics that probably can't be avoided, but I think where Perl shines is in manipulating information--not visual devices. I don't want to learn OpenGL for example, just to visually display tables showing the differences in two different directory trees. But doing so solely in text, or in HTML (which gives me some features, but requires me to output to a format that is difficult to manipulate once it is output) can be cumbersome.

[reply]

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