[Cross-posted to comp.lang.perl.tk with follow-ups set to go there.]
Is there any word on when the enhancements in Tk 8.5 (Tiles, themes,
better-looking widgets) will be made available in the Perl/Tk port? I
know that ActiveState has made some of this available for awhile in the
"Tkx" module, but I'm interested in cross-platform support and am
wondering when 8.5 will be incorporated in the base "Tk" port module.
Dunno. As Nick Ing-Simmons has passed away I don't know if there will
even be an 8.5 version of Perl/Tk. Slaven Rezic has been doing some
maintenance patches but I haven't had the impression that he (or anyone
else) is interested in doing continued development.
Personally, I've started using Tkx. That's partially because as of 5.10
ActiveState includes Tkx by default but no longer includes Perl/Tk. It's
also partially because I'm horribly sick of the Motif-style and really
wanted the native look available via tiles.
The transition hasn't been too painful -- Tkx is more similar to Perl/Tk
than I had expected. My main beef with it is a lack of good
documentation. Tkx is a thin layer over Tcl and you have to go to the
Tcl docs for almost everything. It can be a little challenging to
translate Tcl (which I don't know) into what you should do in Perl.
Sometimes even the Tcl documentation is sorely lacking.
I'm not terribly optimistic about the long-term prospects for Tkx,
though. Switching from Perl/Tk has been bearable but I can't imagine
trying to start with Tkx. ActiveState needs to put more into
documentation if they want it to catch on. They might not care, though,
as long as they can use it for their own tools (like PPM).
Isn't Tkx cross-platform? I've not tried it but I would expect it to be.
-mjc
