TkPerl -- A port of the Tk toolkit to Perl5

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.