FAQ 3.14 How can I write a GUI (X, Tk, Gtk, etc.) in Perl?

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3.14: How can I write a GUI (X, Tk, Gtk, etc.) in Perl?

(contributed by Ben Morrow)

There are a number of modules which let you write GUIs in Perl. Most GUI
toolkits have a perl interface: an incomplete list follows.

Tk This works under Unix and Windows, and the current version doesn't
look half as bad under Windows as it used to. Some of the gui
elements still don't 'feel' quite right, though. The interface is
very natural and 'perlish', making it easy to use in small scripts
that just need a simple gui. It hasn't been updated in a while.

Wx This is a Perl binding for the cross-platform wxWidgets toolkit (
http://www.wxwidgets.org ). It works under Unix, Win32 and Mac OS X,
using native widgets (Gtk under Unix). The interface follows the C++
interface closely, but the documentation is a little sparse for
someone who doesn't know the library, mostly just referring you to
the C++ documentation.

Gtk and Gtk2
These are Perl bindings for the Gtk toolkit ( http://www.gtk.org ).
The interface changed significantly between versions 1 and 2 so they
have separate Perl modules. It runs under Unix, Win32 and Mac OS X
(currently it requires an X server on Mac OS, but a 'native' port is
underway), and the widgets look the same on every platform: i.e.,
they don't match the native widgets. As with Wx, the Perl bindings
follow the C API closely, and the documentation requires you to read
the C documentation to understand it.

Win32::GUI
This provides access to most of the Win32 GUI widgets from Perl.
Obviously, it only runs under Win32, and uses native widgets. The
Perl interface doesn't really follow the C interface: it's been made
more Perlish, and the documentation is pretty good. More advanced
stuff may require familiarity with the C Win32 APIs, or reference to
MSDN.

CamelBones
CamelBones ( http://camelbones.sourceforge.net ) is a Perl interface
to Mac OS X's Cocoa GUI toolkit, and as such can be used to produce
native GUIs on Mac OS X. It's not on CPAN, as it requires frameworks
that CPAN.pm doesn't know how to install, but installation is via
the standard OSX package installer. The Perl API is, again, very
close to the ObjC API it's wrapping, and the documentation just
tells you how to translate from one to the other.

Qt There is a Perl interface to TrollTech's Qt toolkit, but it does not
appear to be maintained.

Athena
Sx is an interface to the Athena widget set which comes with X, but
again it appears not to be much used nowadays.



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