TkPerl-- A port of the Tk toolkit to Perl5
Malcolm Beattie
Oxford University Computing Services
mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk
Abstract
TkPerl is a port (work in progress) of the Tk[1] toolkit to Perl5[2].
It takes advantage of Perl5's object oriented features and magic
variables to implement the Tk toolkit in Perl5. Nothing passes
through the Tcl parser so knowledge of Tcl syntax is not required to
use TkPerl. TkPerl is freeware (distributed under the GNU General
Public License) and is currently in alpha testing. Section 1 of the
paper introduces TkPerl and is followed by a brief section on its
target uses.. Since TkPerl relies heavily on the object oriented
features of Perl5 (which is itself only just into beta test), section
3 explains how Perl5 implements classes, objects and methods. Section
4 discusses the differences between Tk/Tcl and TkPerl both at
scripting level and at C level. Section 5 looks at some of the
porting issues and problems and how Tcl conventions affect the design
of Tk itself. Section 6 explains the current intentions for the future
of TkPerl and section 7 gives availability information.
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