Mastering Perl/Tk: Graphical User Interfaces in Perl / Edition 1

by Stephen Lidie, Nancy Walsh

Overview

Perl/Tk is the marriage of the Tk graphical toolkit with Perl, the powerful programming language used primarily for system administration, web programming, and database manipulation. With Perl/Tk, you can build Perl programs with an attractive, intuitive GUI interface with all the power of Perl behind it. Mastering Perl/Tk is the "bible" of Perl/Tk: It's not only a great book for getting started, but the best reference for learning the techniques of experienced Perl/Tk programmers. The first half of the book contains the basics on how to use Perl/Tk, and then branches out into advanced applications with a series of extensive program examples. The result is a book accessible for novices, and invaluable for experienced programmers ready to learn the next step in the elegant and effective use of Perl/Tk. The book includes:

• An introduction to each of the basic Perl/Tk widgets and geometry managers
• A dissection of the MainLoop, including how to use callbacks and bindings effectively
• Coverage of the Tix widgets, an extended set of widgets that are a part of the standard Perl/Tk distribution
• Working with images in Perl/Tk, including bitmaps, pixmaps, photos, and how to compose a compound image type
• How to create custom mega-widgets in Perl/Tk, both composite and derived
• Handling interprocess communication with Perl/Tk, both with standard Unix utilities (pipes and sockets) and with the send command designed for direct communication between Tk applications
• Developing your own Tk widget in the C language
• Examples of web applications written with Perl/Tk and the LWP library

The book also includes appendices on installing Perl/Tk, a complete quick-reference for each standard widget, and listings of all the extended examples in the book. Nancy Walsh is the author of Learning Perl/Tk, and Steve Lidie wrote the Perl/Tk Pocket Reference as well as a series of Perl/Tk articles in The Perl Journal. Together, they have written Mastering Perl/Tk to be the definitive guide to Perl/Tk.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565927162
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	12/01/2001
Pages:	768
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.19(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Steve Lidie has spent decades consulting, programming and administering systems from Apple, CDC, DEC, HP, IBM, Microsoft and SGI. Author of the Perl/Tk Pocket Reference and graduate of Lehigh University, he currently manages the University's large-scale scientific computing complex, and occasionally writes Tk articles for The Perl Journal and PerlMonth.

Nancy Walsh has been involved with Perl (and Perl/Tk) since 1996. She received a Computer Science degree from the Universityof Arizona in 1993, and currently works as a Principal Consultant for XOR, Inc. doing J2EE and Java work on various projects. Nancy has taught several Perl/Tk Tutorials at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference and is also the author of Learning Perl/Tk.

Table of Contents

Preface; History of This Book; What You Should Already Know; What's in This Book; Reading Order; Typographical Conventions; We'd Like to Hear from You; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1: Hello, Perl/Tk; 1.1 Perl/Tk Concepts; 1.2 Some Perl/Tk History; 1.3 Getting Started with Perl/Tk; 1.4 Hello World Example; 1.5 Unsolicited Advice; 1.6 Debugging and PrototypingPerl/Tk Programs; Chapter 2: Geometry Management; 2.1 The pack Geometry Manager; 2.2 The grid Geometry Manager; 2.3 The place Geometry Manager; 2.4 The form Geometry Manager; 2.5 Geometry Management Summary; Chapter 3: Fonts; 3.1 Experimenting with Fonts; 3.2 Dissecting a Font; 3.3 Using Fonts; 3.4 Using Fonts Dynamically; 3.5 Font Manipulation Methods; Chapter 4: Button, Checkbutton, and Radiobutton Widgets; 4.1 Creating Button Widgets; 4.2 Standard Options for Each Button Type; 4.3 Table of Options for Button-Type Widgets; 4.4 Displaying Text on Buttons; 4.5 Displaying an Image or Bitmap; 4.6 Checkbutton and Radiobutton Indicator Status; 4.7 On and Off Values for a Checkbutton; 4.8 Radiobutton Values; 4.9 The -command Option; 4.10 Disabling a Button; 4.11 Text Manipulation; 4.12 Altering the Button's Style; 4.13 Changing the Size of a Button; 4.14 Adding a Keyboard Mapping; 4.15 Color Options; 4.16 Indicator Colors; 4.17 Hiding the Indicator; 4.18 Focus Options; 4.19 Altering the Highlight Rectangle; 4.20 Configuring a Button; 4.21 Flashing the Button; 4.22 Invoking the Button; 4.23 Turning a Checkbutton/Radiobutton On and Off; Chapter 5: Label and Entry Widgets; 5.1 The Label Widget; 5.2 The Entry Widget; 5.3 The Perl/Tk LabEntry Mega-Widget; Chapter 6: The Scrollbar Widget; 6.1 Defining Scrollbar Parts; 6.2 The Scrolled Method; 6.3 The Scrollbar Widget; 6.4 Examples; Chapter 7: The Listbox Widget; 7.1 Creating and Filling a Listbox; 7.2 Listbox Options; 7.3 Selection Modes; 7.4 Colors; 7.5 Listbox Style; 7.6 Configuring a Listbox; 7.7 Inserting Items; 7.8 Deleting Items; 7.9 Retrieving Elements; 7.10 Selection Methods; 7.11 Moving to a Specific Index; 7.12 Translating Indexes; 7.13 Counting Items; 7.14 Active Versus Selected; 7.15 Bounding Box; 7.16 Finding an Index by y Coordinate; 7.17 Scrolling Methods; 7.18 Listbox Virtual Events; 7.19 Listbox Example; Chapter 8: The Text, TextUndo,and ROText Widgets; 8.1 Creating and Using a Text Widget; 8.2 Text Widget Options; 8.3 A Short Break for a Simple Example; 8.4 Text Indexes; 8.5 Text Tags; 8.6 Inserting Text; 8.7 Deleting Text; 8.8 Retrieving Text; 8.9 Translating Index Values; 8.10 Comparing Index Values; 8.11 Showing an Index; 8.12 Getting the Size of a Character; 8.13 Getting Line Information; 8.14 Searching the Contents of a Text Widget; 8.15 Scrolling; 8.16 Marks; 8.17 Embedding Widgets; 8.18 Internal Debug Flag; 8.19 The Perl/Tk Text Widget Extended Methods; 8.20 The TextUndo Widget; 8.21 The ROText Widget; Chapter 9: The Canvas Widget; 9.1 Creating a Canvas; 9.2 The Canvas Coordinate System; 9.3 The Scrollable Region; 9.4 Using bind with a Canvas; 9.5 Canvas Options; 9.6 Creating Items in a Canvas; 9.7 Configuring the Canvas Widget; 9.8 Configuring Items in the Canvas Widget; 9.9 Tags; 9.10 Retrieving Bounding Box Coordinates; 9.11 Translating Coordinates; 9.12 Moving Items Around; 9.13 Changing the Display List; 9.14 Deleting Items; 9.15 Deleting Tags; 9.16 Determining Item Type; 9.17 Setting Keyboard Focus; 9.18 Rendering the Canvas as PostScript; 9.19 Scaling the Canvas; 9.20 Scanning; 9.21 A Drawing Program Example; Chapter 10: The Scale Widget; 10.1 Creating a Scale; 10.2 Assigning a Callback; 10.3 Orientation; 10.4 Minimum and Maximum Values; 10.5 Displayed Versus Stored Value; 10.6 Adding a Label; 10.7 Displaying Value Increments; 10.8 Changing the Size of the Scale; 10.9 Options You'll Probably Never Need; 10.10 Configuring a Scale; 10.11 Getting the Value of a Scale; 10.12 Setting the Value of a Scale; 10.13 Determining Coordinates; 10.14 Identifying Parts of a Scale; Chapter 11: Frame, MainWindow,and Toplevel Widgets; 11.1 Creating a Frame; 11.2 Creating a Toplevel Widget; 11.3 Options; 11.4 Frame Methods; 11.5 Toplevel Methods; 11.6 Creating Multiple MainWindows; 11.7 Putting Two MainWindows to Work; Chapter 12: The Menu System; 12.1 Menu System Components; 12.2 Menubars and Pulldown Menus; 12.3 The Win32 System Menu Item; 12.4 Classical Menubars; 12.5 Popup Menus; 12.6 Option Menus; 12.7 Menu Virtual Events; 12.8 Pie Menus; Chapter 13: Miscellaneous Perl/Tk Methods; 13.1 Managing Widgets with configure and cget; 13.2 Building a Family Tree; 13.3 Widget's ID; 13.4 Color-Related Methods; 13.5 The Application's Name; 13.6 Widget Existence; 13.7 Is the Widget Mapped?; 13.8 Converting Screen Distances; 13.9 Size of Widget; 13.10 Widget Position; 13.11 Screen Information; 13.12 Atom Methods; 13.13 Ringing a Bell; 13.14 Clipboard and Selection Methods; 13.15 Destroying a Widget; 13.16 Focus Methods; 13.17 Grab Methods; 13.18 Marking a Widget Busy and Unbusy; 13.19 Widget Mapping and Layering; 13.20 Interapplication Communication; 13.21 Waiting for Events to Happen; 13.22 Time Delays; 13.23 Parsing Command-Line Options; 13.24 Really Miscellaneous Methods; Chapter 14: Creating Custom Widgets in Pure Perl/Tk; 14.1 A Mega-Widget Quick-Start; 14.2 The Perl/Tk Class Hierarchy; 14.3 Mega-Widget Implementation Details; 14.4 Composite Mega-Widgets; 14.5 Derived Mega-Widgets; 14.6 Packaging a Mega-Widget for Public Distribution; Chapter 15: Anatomy of the MainLoop; 15.1 Creating a Callback; 15.2 Binding to Events; 15.3 The bindtags Command; 15.4 Executing Nonblocking System Commands; 15.5 Tracing Perl/Tk Variables; 15.6 Nonblocking Wait Activities; 15.7 Splash Screens; 15.8 Synthesizing Virtual Events; 15.9 Coexisting with Other GUI Main Loops; Chapter 16: User Customization; 16.1 Using the Command Line; 16.2 Using the Option Database; Chapter 17: Images and Animations; 17.1 An Overview of Perl/Tk Image Types; 17.2 Methods Common to All Image Types; 17.3 Bitmap Primitives; 17.4 DefineBitmap; 17.5 The Bitmap Image Type; 17.6 The Pixmap Image Type; 17.7 The Photo Image Type; 17.8 The Compound Image Type; 17.9 Tk::Animation; 17.10 tkneko—Animating the Neko on a Canvas; 17.11 Tile and Transparent Images; 17.12 Miscellaneous Image Methods; 17.13 Simple Photo Rotations; Chapter 18: A Tk Interface Extension Tour; 18.1 Display Items; 18.2 Item Styles; 18.3 The TList Widget; 18.4 The HList Family of Widgets; 18.5 Tix Images; Chapter 19: Interprocess Communicationwith Pipes and Sockets; 19.1 Handling Unsolicited Media Changes; 19.2 IPADM Design Considerations; 19.3 The Perl/Tk IPADM Client, ipadm; 19.4 The IPADM Helper, ipadmh; 19.5 The IPADM Daemon, ipadmd; 19.6 Polling Win32 Sockets; Chapter 20: IPC with send; 20.1 Security and Inter-Language Considerations; 20.2 Computing π with Parallel Message Passing; 20.3 TclRobots; Chapter 21: C Widget Internals; 21.1 The Tk::Square Widget; 21.2 Interfacing tkSquare.c with Perl/Tk; 21.3 Building and Testing Tk::Square; 21.4 How Not to Port Tk::Square; Chapter 22: Perl/Tk and the Web; 22.1 Library for WWW Access in Perl; 22.2 The PerlPlus Browser Plug-in; Chapter 23: Plethora of pTk Potpourri; 23.1 pTk Special Variables and Exporter Symbols; 23.2 Manipulating the Cursor; 23.3 Dialog Boxes; 23.4 The Adjuster Widget; 23.5 The Balloon Widget; 23.6 The BrowseEntry Widget; 23.7 The LabFrame Widget; 23.8 The NoteBook Widget; 23.9 The Pane Widget; 23.10 The ProgressBar Widget; 23.11 Widgets Not in the Perl/Tk Distribution; Appendix A: Installing Perl/Tk; A.1 Installing Perl/Tk for Unix; A.2 Installing Perl/Tk for Win32; Appendix B: Options and Default Valuesfor Each Widget; B.1 Adjuster; B.2 Balloon; B.3 Bitmap; B.4 BrowseEntry; B.5 Button; B.6 Canvas; B.7 Checkbutton; B.8 ColorEditor; B.9 Dialog; B.10 DirTree; B.11 Entry; B.12 ErrorDialog; B.13 FileSelect; B.14 Frame; B.15 HList; B.16 Label; B.17 LabEntry; B.18 LabFrame; B.19 Listbox; B.20 MainWindow; B.21 Menu; B.22 Menubutton; B.23 Message; B.24 NoteBook; B.25 Optionmenu; B.26 Pane; B.27 Photo; B.28 ProgressBar; B.29 Radiobutton; B.30 ROText; B.31 Scale; B.32 Scrollbar; B.33 Table; B.34 Text; B.35 TextUndo; B.36 Tiler; B.37 TList; B.38 Toplevel; B.39 Tree; Appendix C: Complete Program Listings; C.1 Tk::CollapsableFrame; C.2 Tk::MacCopy; C.3 Tk::ExecuteCommand; C.4 Proc::Killfam; C.5 tkmpg123; C.6 Tk::Trace; C.7 tkhp16c; C.8 Tk::MacProgressBar; C.9 TclRobots.pm; C.10 Robot Control Program complex.ptr; C.11 clock-bezier.ppl; C.12 tkhanoi.ppl; Colophon;