It is widely known that Perl supports Unicode starting from version 5.6.0 at deep core C level, and this support is currently imrpoving and improving.

This is good and really helps in everyday programs.

What currently bothers me is lack of Unicode in perl's Tk extension.
I know that perl-Tk supports Unicode starting from version 804.024, but its shape is not good enough to use. It has a lot of known problems, and because of this Activestate's build of perl-5.8.0 contains elder Tk that does not understands Unicode.

My thought on this matter is simple:
Tk is built into Perl too tihtly and this makes newer version of Tk harder to embed.
Another drawback of such tight Perl and Tk incorporation is inability to use pure-tcl widgets

Look how Tk support is built into Python and Ruby: both just use externally installed Tcl-Tk and have appropriate support modules.

I know there exists Inline::Tcl module, but this module has other set of problems, and also it does not provide good compatibility of Perl's and Tcl's strings.

Okay, I've described a core of a problem, now how we should solve it.

perl and Tk should be integrated in slightly a different way,
there should be some more distance between Perl and Tk! Like this was done in Python and Ruby.

Implementation of such idea should not be very hard, as long as there exist some examples.
But to really implement this there should be some efforts spent.
Personally, I can spent my own efforts on this, but my efforts are weak and tiny.

Are there exist brave men here that could share their thoughts on this matter?
May be they even are able to spend their efforts?
Please tell me what do you think.

I hope this works....
Courage, the Cowardly Dog.

In reply to Perl, Unicode and Tk -- they should be together! by Courage

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