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.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Perl, Unicode and Tk -- they should be together!
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Apr 14, 2003 at 07:31 UTC
    Implementation of such idea should not be very hard

    Nick Ing-Simmons, author of the Tk module will be pleased to hear that. Have you already contacted him? What did he say?

    Abigail

[reply]
      Unfortunately Nick Ing-Simmons did not answered.

      Meanwhile I tried that myself and succeeded. After that I created newer versions of Tcl and Tcl::Tk on CPAN (author=VKON) and announced there: New beta versions of Tcl and Tcl::Tk modules are available

      Currently work in progress, but actually there should be done really few things to finalize things, and most hard in my case is to find right words in documentation.

      Courage, the Cowardly Dog

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Re: Perl, Unicode and Tk -- they should be together!
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 14, 2003 at 08:03 UTC
    This sounds rather naive, I think the effort would be severely wasted.

    Tk is built into Perl too tihtly and this makes newer version of Tk harder to embed.
    What information do you base this conclusion on? I don't believe it.
[reply]
      Look how Tk embedded into python and into ruby. If perl also could do that, Unicode in perl+Tk will be be guaranteed as long as it exist in newer Tk distribution.

      I'll show you concrete places in concrete files if you 're still not convinced.

      Courage, the Cowardly Dog

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