Mastering Perl/Tk

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-referencefor 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.