Path: usenet.cis.ufl.edu!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!news.mathworks.com!news.kei.com!news.consultix.com!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!lnsnews.lns.cornell.edu!lns62.lns.cornell.edu!PVHP From: pvhp@lns62.lns.cornell.edu (Peter Prymmer) Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.tk,comp.lang.perl.announce,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: comp.lang.perl.tk FAQ part1 of 5 Followup-To: comp.lang.perl.tk Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 09:02:06 GMT Organization: Wilson Lab, Cornell U., Ithaca, NY, 14853 Lines: 855 Approved: pvhp@lns62.lns.cornell.edu (Peter Prymmer) Expires: Sun, 14 Apr 1996 08:00:59 GMT Message-ID: <0099F5AC.A3A7A460@lns62.lns.cornell.edu> Reply-To: PVHP@lns62.lns.cornell.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: lns62.lns.cornell.edu Summary: comp.lang.perl.tk Frequently Asked Questions. Xref: usenet.cis.ufl.edu comp.lang.perl.tk:1407 comp.lang.perl.announce:292 comp.answers:17395 news.answers:67396 Summary: comp.lang.perl.tk Frequently Asked Questions. Archive-name: perl-faq/ptk-faq/part1 Posting-Frequency: monthly Last-modified: Fri Mar 15 03:38:13 EST 1996 URL: http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/ptkFAQ.html Version: 0.01 URL (Hypertext-split): http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/ptkTOC.html URL (Plaintext): http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/ptkFAQ.txt Image-supplement: http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/ptkIMG.html ftp-Archive: ftp://ftp.ccd.bnl.gov/pub/ptk/ptkFAQ.txt ftp-Archive: ftp://ftp.wpi.edu/perl5/pTk-FAQ ftp-Archive: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/perl-faq/ptk-faq/ e-mail-Archive: ptkfaq@pubweb.bnl.gov gopher-Archive: 128.84.219.153 Perl/Tk FAQ part 1 of 5 - Getting Started ***************************************** ______________________________________________________________________ 5. How do I build it? In general, building perl/Tk requires: 1. A made & installed perl (requires a C language compiler). You may need different versions of perl depending on which version of Tk you wish to run. 2. A C language compiler for the Tk code itself. 3. A linkable Xlib (.o, .so, .a, etc.) for X-windows. Perl/Tk has been successfully built using various vendors' cc compilers, as well as with the free GNU gcc compiler. A make utility of some sort ( make/gmake) will be extremely helpful. The versions of the various Perl utilities that you need on hand are roughly as follows: Utility Version Tk version/comments perl 5.001m Tk-b8 (not 5.001n) perl 5.002b1f (or higher) Tk-b9 (9.01 recommended) perl 5.002b1f (or higher) Tk-b9.01 perl 5.002 Tk-b10 MakeMaker 4.18 (or higher) Tk-b8 MakeMaker 5.14 (or higher) Tk-b9.01 xsubpp Step - by - step the commands to build the Tk extension to Perl are (for the dynamically linked version) roughly as follows: 1. Install Perl (5.001m for Tk-b8 [not 5.001n], at least 5.002b1f for b9.01) For code locations see a CPAN site (separate question in this FAQ), the actual installation instructions come bundled in the perl***.tar.gz distribution file. (Perl Configure & make troubles are beyond the scope of this FAQ - please see the Perl FAQ itself for more help with this critical step.) 2. Unpack perl/Tk outside the Perl distribution (i.e. outside the perl build, perl install, or perl lib areas). gunzip Tk-b*.tar.gz tar -xvf Tk-b*.tar (this area Tk-b*/ will be referred to as your ``Tk build'' directory) (optional: with Tk-b9.01, to avert most pod2man errors later on you may wish to apply Nick's document patch. 3. If necessary remove any previous installed version of perl/Tk (see below). 4. Compile and test. cd Tk-b* perl Makefile.PL make basic_demo (modify #! line if nec., or specify /path/to/perl ./basic_demo) warning if you build Tk with perl5.002gamma then change the line in basic_demo from use lib ./blib; to use lib qw(blib/arch blib/lib); 5. Install. make install (The statically linked instructions are different - see the INSTALL file for explicit instructions.) If you had a previously working version of Tk installed, you may need to resurrect the Makefile for it and execute: make uninstall make realclean before you unpack the new version. (The uninstall target of MakeMaker is relatively new so please be careful.) On the perl Makefile.PL step it may be necessary to give explicit locations of required libraries and/or include headers. For example: perl Makefile.PL X11=/usr/local/X11R5 or perl Makefile.PL X11INC=/usr/local/share/X11R5/include \ X11LIB=/usr/local/arch/X11R5/lib There are system and site dependencies in all of the above steps. However, the largest single source of build trouble comes from not using the latest versions of the various utilities (C compiler, make, etc.). In particular ensure that when you say perl Makefile.PL that the perl that gets invoked is up to date - use which perl and perl -v to determine this. If necessary specify the full path name to your perl5 interpreter/compiler. (For good reason a lot of people do not simply rm their working perl 4 interpreter/compiler when upgrading to perl 5!) If you still run into trouble take a look at the INSTALL, the README and the README file for your specific system (e.g. README.AIX, README.OSF, etc.). You might also find your system mentioned in the ptk hyper-mail archive at: http://pubweb.bnl.gov/~ptk/ or http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/mailing-lists/ptk/ or ftp://ftp.ccd.bnl.gov/pub/ptk/archives/ or the Perl 5 Porters page at: http://www.nicoh.com/cgi-bin/lwgate/PERL5-PORTERS/ http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/mailing-lists/Perl5-Porters/ If you wish to discuss your Tk buld problems with others run and save the output from the myConfig script in the Tk build directory (the output may already be in the myConfig.out file from your Tk-b# build directory), as well as the myconfig script in your perl build directory. It is often helpful to include the output of either (or both) of these scripts in your discussion. Presented here are the beginnings of a list of problems associated with building Tk-b# on various platforms (for help building perl itself please refer to the Perl FAQ). This list is in no way complete nor authoritative (nor is it necessarily even up-to-date!) but simply lists problems people have reported. Keep in mind that your installation may differ (e.g. location differences such as /usr/bin/perl vs. /usr/local/bin/perl) even if its the same platform listed here: Unices: ======= AIX: As of perl5.002b & Tk-b9.01 README.AIX says no patching is necessary. For Tk-b8: modifying the perl.exp file may be necessary. There is a patch in Tk-b8/README.AIX. It may be necessary to make regen_headers after the patch. BSD4.4: HPUX: Most people seem to prefer the dynamic linking afforded by a recent version of the gcc compiler on this system. Linux: John C. Wingenbach indicates that should you encounter an error message like Cannot find -lX11 anywhere at ./myConfig line 184 when running your perl Makefile.PL (under Slakware 3.0) that you should be more specific about -l/path/to/libX11.a. Adam Wasserman has graciously provided a compilation of Linux compilation trials & tribulations. It is an (as yet un-edited) document available at: http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/etc/linux_compile_compilation.txt NeXTSTEP: Gerd Knops recently posted a discussion of the steps to get perl running on several NeXTSTEPs to p5p. OSF/1: As of perl5.002b & Tk-b9.01 you will probably be able to follow the usual instructions. John Stoffel reports that if you use gcc (rather than cc) you should use at least version 2.7.2 For Tk-b8: make is reputedly not up to the task on this system. Tk-b8/README.OSF recommends gmake instead. Stephane Bortzmeyer reports a successful build with Perl 5.001m, xsubpp 1.922, MakeMaker 4.23. He points out that it was necessary for him to upgrade the xsubpp and MakeMaker that he received with his copy of Perl5.001m. SCO: For Tk-b8: Eric J. Bohm reported a need to comment out line(s) from myConfig and GNUMakefiles using GNU make 3.67. (See Tk-b8/README.SCO for specifics.) SGI (Irix): Matthew Black recently mentioned a need to apply "patchSG0000596" to get perl sockets to work. His message was copywritten and is not included here. Send e-mail to him to find out where the get "patchSG0000596". Suns: SunOS (BSD): For Tk-b8: Tom Tignor reports the following on SunOS (sun4m sparc): Tue, 28 Nov 1995 13:19:42 In trying to make, I got a "write: argument mismatch" error for the file ptK/Lang.h. I looked at the file and found the offending function, Tcl_GetOpenFile, which has a third argument called "doWrite" (not "write") in tkGlue.c. I changed the argument from "write" to "doWrite" in Lang.h and it's compiling fine (for the moment. :) Solaris (System V): For Tk-b8: There is trouble getting perl to use Socket routines (i.e. trouble with make perl itself not necessarily trouble with Tk-b#). See the perl FAQ for more info or the .shar file that Tom Christiansen occasionally posts to comp.lang.perl.misc. Further information on perl inter process communication can be found in the perlipc* files at: ftp://ftp.perl.com/perl/info/everything_to_know/. SVR4: For Tk-b8: Martha G. Armour and Len Reed report on two separate hardware platforms running SVR4 - extensive details in Tk-b8/README.SVR4. Interestingly, they report no trouble at all on Linux. SVR5: Ultrix: non-Unix(ish)es: ================ Information on non-Unix(ish) perl platforms may be obtained from the perl metaFAQ (pmFAQ) at http://www.khoros.unm.edu/staff/neilb/perl/metaFAQ/entry-04.html or the Perl 5 Porters (p5p) page at: http://www.nicoh.com/cgi-bin/lwgate/PERL5-PORTERS/ http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/mailing-lists/Perl5-Porters/ In general your non-Unix platform must be able to support perl 5 and Xlib (a C compiler and a make utility are tremendously useful in this regard). Once you get perl 5 running be sure your MakeMaker and Autoload perl utilities are working too. 68K: (perhaps your best bet is Mach Ten with X, or MacLinux/MacBSD (?) Acorn: Amiga: (see pmFAQ or p5p) Atari: (see pmFAQ or p5p) DOS: (see pmFAQ or p5p) Human68K: (see pmFAQ or p5p) LynxOS: (see pmFAQ or p5p) Mac: Check the ports/mac/ directory at CPAN site (when last checked in January 1996 the binary in this dir corresponded to perl4.036) Matthias Neeracher is leading the effort to implement perl 5 for the Mac. There is also a mailing list for MacPerl: send a message body of "subscribe" to . The list itself is addressed as There is a hypermail archive of the MacPerl list at http://www.its.unimelb.edu.au:801/hma/pub/macperl/ There is a FAQ-like question & answer document for MacPerl at: http://err.ethz.ch/members/neeri/macintosh/perl-qa.html (see also pmFAQ or p5p) The latest versions of the source code for Tcl/Tk have build directories for Macs. OS/2: For perl itself see the os2/README file that comes with perl (5.002beta). Ilya Zakharevich recommends a GNU make patch available from ftp://ftp.math.ohio-state.edu/pub/users/ilya/os2 VMS: Charles Bailey has done a wonderful job porting perl 5 to VMS. It can be built using MMS, MMK, or VMS GMake or IMake. Not (yet?!) distributed on CPAN it is available from: ftp://genetics.upenn.edu/perl5/perl5_vmstest.zip (Recommendations: do not try anything but a VMS web browser to follow the hyperlink as browsers on other OSes do not grok the protocol on VMS ftp servers too well. If you do not have a VMS web-browser then use line mode ftp instead. Do use an UNZIP specifically compiled for the VMS file system.) Angel Li has ported Tcl7.5a2 and Tk4.1a2 to VMS and maintains a web page at http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/vms-tcl.html Win 95: (see Win NT, DOS, or the page at: http://www.inxpress.net/~moewes/computer/perl95.html) Win NT: See hip info on (perl5 only) at: http://info.hip.com/ntperl/ There is a mailing list for porters at: . There is also a mailing list for users at: . Questions concerning either list can be addressed by sending e-mail to: . To unsubscribe from perl-win32-users send a message of unsubscribe perl-win32-users to . The latest versions of the source code for Tcl/Tk have build directories for PC-style microcomputers. Nick Ing-Simmons has recently (Jan 96) commented on the steps necessary to get perl/Tk running on these sorts of platforms. Check out: http://sun20.ccd.bnl.gov/~ptk/archive/ptk.1995.12/0191.html . Xenix: (see pmFAQ or p5p) ______________________________________________________________________ 6. Where is the Documentation? Documentation is "in the works": there are several books dealing with perl/Tk in progress, and a growing FAQ (the document you are presently reading). In the meantime the available information resources can be split into Perl/Tk, Perl, and Tcl/Tk documentation categories: Perl/Tk Specific Documentation ============================== The man pages ------------- As of Tk-b9.01 the various perl/Tk pod documents are converted to roff format and installed as part of the perl/Tk "make install" process. If you have a recent verion of perl/Tk try something like man 3 Tk::Tk if this does not work check with you system administrator for the proper MANPATH. (Tk-b9.01 people may be interested in applying Nick's document patch to keep pod2man from complaining too much during make install.) The newsgroup ------------- The newsgroup name is comp.lang.perl.tk and this FAQ will be periodically posted to that group. The newsgroup is the appropriate place to post questions - yes even simple ones! (Although answers may be long in coming...:-( The nTk/pTk mailing list ------------------------ The mailing list is a supplement to the newsgroup comp.lang.perl.tk. The nTk/pTk Mailing List Archive remains a useful source of information however, and is accesible at either http://pubweb.bnl.gov/~ptk/, or via ftp at ftp://ftp.ccd.bnl.gov/pub/ptk/archives/ (both in the USA). You may search the contents of the mailing list archives thanks to a cgi-bin script written by Achim Bohnet in Germany at: http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/mailing-lists/ptk/ To remove yourself from the mailing list, you can send mail to majordomo@guest.wpi.edu with the following command in the body of your e-mail message: unsubscribe ptk joe.user@somewhere (Joe D. User) (To send a message to all recipients of the mailing list send e-mail to ptk@guest.wpi.edu. - but please consider posting to the newsgroup instead.) The demo programs ----------------- Examine (and try running) the code in your Tk-b#/, perl5/Tk/demos/, and perl5/Tk/demos/widget_lib/ directories. In order to determine where on your system the perl5/ directory is located type the following one-line perl command (at your shell prompt - this is not a line from a perl script): perl -e 'print join("\n",@INC),"\n";' If that command does not turn up a perl5/ directory then make sure that you are running perl 5 with the following: perl -v (again this can be entered at the shell prompt). The pod documentation --------------------- As of Tk-b9.01 the various perl/Tk pod documents are converted to roff format and installed as part of the perl/Tk installation process. If you have a recent verion of perl/Tk try something like man 3 Tk::Tk. If this does not work check your man path with perl -e 'use Config; print $Config{'man1dir'},"\n",$Config{'man3dir'},"\n"' And if you still cannot find the manual pages check with your system administrator for the proper MANPATH and/or Tk-# installation version. In your perl5/Tk/ directory there should be a number of .pod files including (but not limited to) UserGuide.pod. The files are examples of the perl "plain old documentation" format and are just about human readable as they are (e.g. you may more, cat, or less them; or send them to a printer). They are intended to be run through a re-formatting program however. Such programs include pod2man, pod2html, and pod2latex (which get installed when you install perl) or pod2text which was written by Tom Christiansen. A command line like the following (but subject to local variations) should work for you: pod2man perl5/Tk/UserGuide.pod | nroff -man | more There should even be a perl script to run the above command for you. It is executed as: perldoc perl5/Tk/UserGuide Note that if there is pod like documentation in a perl module you may also execute perldoc on it as in: perldoc ColorEditor.pm (please note that not all .pm mod files have pod embedded.) If you want that GUI look and feel (like xman) make the appropriate changes to the following script: #!/usr/bin/perl use Tk; use Tk::Pod; my $m = new MainWindow; $m -> Pod(-file => 'Tk/ColorEditor.pm'); MainLoop; The conversion to latex proceeds as you might guess, namely: pod2latex UserGuide.pod (according to the 1.1 version of pod2latex this will automatically generate a UserGuide.tex file hence you must have write access to the directory in which the above command is carried out.) You may also convert the pod pages to HTML (the HyperText Markup L anguage of World Wide Web documents). For example, command lines like the following (but subject to local variations - is your web_browser configured to allow local access to a file? - if not do this on a web-serving machine) should work for you: pod2html perl5/Tk/UserGuide.pod > UserGuide.html web_browser_invocation UserGuide.html In addition there is, on an experimental basis, a place to view the Tk-b9.01 .pod->.html files from the perl5/Tk directory at: http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/pod/ (Please note that the perl pod specification does not allow for markup within a verbatim paragraph - yet font changes often seem to be in either the or the
 HTML environments generated by
 running many of these .pod files through the latest version of pod2html.
 Alert browsers are welcome to notify me of any errors in the hand-altered 
 html files.) 
 
 Translators pod2texinfo, pod2fm, etc., also exist. Check a CPAN site
 for these scripts if you do not already have them. 
 
 In your Tk-b#/doc directory there should be a number of .ht files. These
 are conversions of Tcl/Tk man pages to html. (If you wish to browse them at
 your own site you may wish to look at Mark Elston's cvtht script, or
 configure your web-server/browser to recognize the .ht extension as a
 text/html mime.type.) The .ht are helpful to the perl/Tk programmer
 trying to remember the name of an optional argument to pass to a given
 widget primitive. Note that insofar as these pages do specify syntax it
 pertains to Tcl/Tk not perl/Tk, hence they must be translated. The pages are
 on the web at: 
 
     http://pubweb.bnl.gov/~ptk/doc/index.html
     http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/doc/
 
 A miscellany of internet perl/Tk resources includes: 
 
 World Wide Web - perl/Tk man pages
     http://pubweb.bnl.gov/~ptk/doc/index.html
     http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/doc/
     http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/pod/
 Newsgroups
     comp.lang.perl.tk
     comp.lang.perl.misc
     comp.lang.perl.anounce
     comp.lang.tcl
     comp.answers
     news.answers
 Perl/Tk FAQ-Archives (ftp sites) [Note: FAQ may be many separate files]
  (see also CPAN sites)
     ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/comp.lang.perl.tk
     ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/comp/lang/perl/tk
     ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.answers/perl-faq/ptk-faq
     ftp://ftp.ccd.bnl.gov/pub/ptk/                   130.199.54.188
     ftp://ftp.ccd.bnl.gov/pub/ptk/ptkFAQ.txt         130.199.54.188
     ftp://ftp.wpi.edu/perl5/pTk-FAQ                  130.215.24.209
     ftp://perl.com/pub/perl/doc/ptkFAQ.gz            199.45.129.30
     ftp://perl.com/pub/perl/doc/ptkFAQ.ps.gz         199.45.129.30
 WWW-FAQ for perl/Tk
     http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/ptkTOC.html
     http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/ptkFAQ.html
 World Wide Web - perl/Tk info sites
     http://pubweb.bnl.gov/~ptk/
     http://fxfx.com/kgr/compound/ (Perl Tk Compound Widget Page)
     http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/ptkIMG.html (FAQ image supplement)
     http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/etc/
 The Mailing list
     majordomo@guest.wpi.edu 
     ptk@guest.wpi.edu 
 
 Perl Specific Documentation
 ===========================
 
 There are a growing number Perl books available. A more complete
 Perl-bibliographic discussion than that given here is available in the Perl
 FAQ at: 
 
     http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/Q2.2.html
 
 The two early Perl books by Schwartz and Wall are very helpful (even if they
 do pertain to perl 4 and not 5. Beware that perl/Tk makes extensive use of
 perl 5 features.): 
 
  Learning Perl (The Llama)
  Randal L. Schwartz
  Copyright © 1993 O'Reilly & Associates Inc.
  ISBN 1-56592-042-2 (English)
  ISBN 2-84177-005-2 (French)
  ISBN 3-930673-08-8 (German)
  ISBN 4-89502-678-1 (Japanese)
 
  Programming Perl (The Camel)
  Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz
  Copyright © 1991 O'Reilly & Associates Inc.
  ISBN 0-937175-64-1 (English)
  ISBN 3-446-17257-2 (German) (Programmieren in Perl, translator:
  Hanser Verlag)
  ISBN 4-89052-384-7 (Japanese)
 
 For Perl 5 there will be an update to the Camel ("Learning More Perl"? the
 Alpaca?) in preparation by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Christiansen, Larry
 Wall, and Stephen Potter, with a draft due at O'Reilly by the end of April
 1996. There is some Perl5 (book material) information at: 
 
     http://www.metronet.com/1h/perlinfo/perl5/
 
 Jon Orwant (the organizer of the comp.lang.perl.tk newgroup) will have a
 book on Perl 5 out in January 1996. (Please note that it is mostly about Perl
 5, there is a some discussion of four simple Perl/Tk programs, but it is not a
 book wholly devoted to Perl/Tk.) The relevant info: 
 
  Perl 5 Interactive
  Jon Orwant
  The Waite Group Press
  ISBN: 1-57169-064-6
 
 The perl 5 Quick Reference Guide (may require LaTeX for installation) can
 be obtained from any CPAN ftp site. Detailed location information is also
 available at the author's website: 
 
     http://www.xs4all.nl/~jvromans/perlref.html
 
 There is also the: 
 
  Perl 5 Desktop Reference
  Johan Vromans
  Copyright © February 1996 O'Reilly & Associates Inc.
  ISBN: 1-56592-187-9; Order number: 1879
 
 The multi-part perl 5 man pages are available (assuming they have been
 installed in your MANPATH, type man perl, man perlmod etc.). 
 
 The perl man pages are also available on the web at a number of locations
 including: 
 
 World Wide Web - perl 5 (.001m) man pages
   Australia
     http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~slf/perl5/perl.html
     http://bwyan.anu.edu.au/perl.html
   Austria
     http://www.cosy.sbg.ac.at/comp/lang/perl/perl5man/perl.html
   Brazil
     http://www.lsi.usp.br/perl5/
   Canada
     http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/perldoc/perl.html
     http://stoner.eps.mcgill.ca/perl/perl.html
   Germany
     http://www.t-informatik.ba-stuttgart.de/Perl5/perl.html
     http://www.dfv.rwth-aachen.de/doc/perl/perl.html
   Norway
     http://www.pvv.unit.no/sw/perl5/index.html
   Slovak Republic
     http://www.savba.sk/autori/perl/perl.html
   Slovenia
     http://www.ijs.si/perl/
   Taiwan
     http://www.ccu.edu.tw/perl5/index.html
   UK
     http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~richardd/perl5/perl.html
     http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/perl/perl.html
   USA
     http://www.metronet.com/0/perlinfo/perl5/manual/perl.html
     http://rhine.ece.utexas.edu/~kschu/perlman.html
     http://duggy.extern.ucsd.edu/perl/perl.html
     http://tbone.biol.scarolina.edu/~dean/perl/perl.html
     http://www.mit.edu:8001/perl/perl.html
     http://icg.stwing.upenn.edu/perl5/perl.html
     http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/compdoc/info/perl/perl.html
 
 World Wide Web - perl 5.002 man pages (also useful for previous versions of perl 5)
   USA
     http://www.lafayette.edu/doughera/doughera/perl/manual/perl.html
     http://www.va.pubnix.com/staff/stripes/perlinfo/
     http://www.perl.com/perl/manual/
     http://128.84.219.39/public/perl/manual/
 
 In addition to the CPAN ftp source sites, a miscellany of internet perl
 resources includes: 
 
 Newsgroups
     comp.lang.perl.misc
     comp.lang.perl.announce
     comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi
     comp.answers
     news.answers
 Perl FAQ-Archives (ftp sites) [Note: FAQ may be many separate files]
     (see also the CPAN sites)
   North America
     ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/perl-faq/
     ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.answers/perl-faq  192.48.96.9
     ftp://ftp.khoros.unm.edu/pub/perl/faq.gz       198.59.155.28
   Europe 
     ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/NEWS.ANSWERS/perl-faq/ 131.211.80.17
     ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/perl/FAQ       146.169.2.10
 Gopher Perl FAQ 
     gopher://gopher.metronet.com/11/perlinfo/faq
 WWW-FAQ for Perl
     http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/
     http://www.smartpages.com/bngfaqs/comp/lang/perl/top.html
     http://www.smartpages.com/bngfaqs/comp/lang/perl/misc/top.html
     http://www.smartpages.com/bngfaqs/comp/lang/perl/announce/top.html
     http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/perl-faq/top.html
 Perl for Win32 FAQ  (discusses Win95)
     http://info.hip.com/ntperl/PerlFaq.htm
 
 Perl info sites
 Gopher (:70)
   USA
     gopher://gopher.metronet.com/11h/perlinfo
 World Wide Web (http:80)
   USA
     http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Languages/Perl/index.html
     http://www.perl.com/
     http://www.khoros.unm.edu/staff/neilb/perl/home.html
     http://www.khoros.unm.edu:80/staff/neilb/perl/metaFAQ/
     http://www.metronet.com/perlinfo/
     http://www.metronet.com/perlinfo/perl5.html (Perl 5)
     http://www.eecs.nwu.edu/perl/perl.html
     http://128.84.219.39/public/perl/
     http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Perl.html
     http://www.hermetica.com/technologia/unexec/
     http://www.oac.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/perlWWW/
     http://web.sau.edu/~mkruse/www/scripts/
     http://orwant.www.media.mit.edu/the_perl_journal/
     http://www.perl.com/Architext/AT-allperl.html
     http://www.mispress.com/introcgi/
   UK
     http://pubweb.nexor.co.uk/public/perl/perl.html
     http://www.bio.cam.ac.uk/web/form.html
 Web references to Perl mailing lists
     http://www.perl.com/perl/info/mailing-lists.html
     http://www.nicoh.com/cgi-bin/lwgate/PERL5-PORTERS/
     http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/mailing-lists/
 
 Tcl/Tk Specific Documentation
 =============================
 
 The two Tcl/Tk books by Ousterhout and Welch are very good starting
 points (you must however, translate the tcl-isms to perl in the sample
 scripts): 
 
  Tcl and the Tk Toolkit
  John K. Ousterhout
  Copyright © 1994 Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
  ISBN 0-201-63337-X (alk. paper)
  LOC QA76.73.T44097 1994; 005.13'3--dc20
 
  Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk
  Brent Welch
  Copyright © 1995 Prentice Hall
  ISBN 0-13-182007-9 
 
 Within the tclsh or wish shells your manpath includes the tcl/tk man
 pages (which may not be in your login manpath). Thus from the % prompt
 within either shell type commands like: 
 
     % man -k Tk
 
 The Tcl/Tk Reference Guide is also a source of useful information.
 Although it's Tcl specific most perl/Tk commands can be, more or less,
 easily derived from it. [As of Tk-b9.01 the names of some functions and
 some configuration options have changed slightly from their Tcl/Tk
 counterparts. With Tk-b9.01 (and higher) a great many functions start with
 an upper case letter and continue with all lower case letters (e.g. there is a
 perl/Tk Entry widget but no entry widget), and many configuration
 options are all lower case (e.g. there is a perl/Tk highlightthickness
 option but no highlightThickness option).] You may fetch the Tcl/Tk
 Reference Guide (may require LaTeX for installation) from: 
 
     ftp://ftp.slac.stanford.edu/software/TkMail/tkref-4.0.1.tar.gz 134.79.18.30
     ftp://ftp.aud.alcatel.com/tcl/docs/tkref-4.0.1.tar.gz          198.64.191.10
 
 There are a number of other Tcl/Tk resources on the internet including: 
 
 Newsgroups
     comp.lang.tcl
     comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi
     comp.answers
     news.answers
 FAQ-Archive (ftp) [Note: Tcl FAQ may be many files, Tk FAQ is one file]
     ftp://ftp.aud.alcatel.com/tcl/docs/                            198.64.191.10
     ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/tcl-faq
     ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/tcl-faq/tk
 WWW-FAQ for Tcl/Tk
     http://www.smartpages.com/faqs/tcl-faq/top.html
     http://www.smartpages.com/bngfaqs/comp/lang/tcl/top.html
     http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/tcl-faq/top.html
     http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/bngusenet/comp/lang/tcl/top.html
     http://www.sco.com/Technology/tcl/Tcl.html
 World Wide Web - Tcl/Tk info sites
   Canada
     http://web.cs.ualberta.ca/~wade/Auto/Tcl.html
   UK
     http://http2.brunel.ac.uk:8080/~csstddm/TCL2/TCL2.html
   USA
     http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Languages/Tcl_Tk/index.html
     http://www.sunlabs.com/research/tcl/docs.html
     http://www.sunlabs.com/research/tcl/4.0.html
     http://www.sco.com/Technology/tcl/Tcl.html
     http://www.neosoft.com/tcl/
 Tcl/Tk - miscellaneous extensions
     ftp://ftp.cme.nist.gov/pub/expect/
     http://www.cs.hut.fi/~kjk/porttk.html
     http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ioi/tix/tix.html
     http://www.ece.cmu.edu/afs/ece/usr/svoboda/www/th/homepage.html
     http://www.tcltk.com/ [incr Tcl]
     http://www.neosoft.com/tcl/TclX.html
     http://www.eolas.com/eolas/webrouse/tcl.htm [WebWish]
 
 ______________________________________________________________________
 
 
 
 7. How do I write scripts in perl/Tk? 
 
 Start your script as you would any perl script (e.g. #!/usr/bin/perl, 
 #!/usr/local/bin/perl, #!/opt/bin/perl, whatever, see the 
 perlrun(1) man page for more information).
 Throwing the -w warning switch is recommended.
 The use of the statement use strict; is recommended.
 Use of the statement use Tk; is required.
 
 A simple "Hello World!" widget script could be written as follows: 
 
     #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
 
     use strict;
     use Tk;
 
     my $main = new MainWindow;
     $main->Label(-text => 'Hello World!'
                  )->pack;
     $main->Button(-text => 'Quit',
                   -command => sub{exit}
                   )->pack;
     MainLoop;
 
 The MainLoop; statement is the main widget event handler loop and is
 usually found in perl/Tk scripts (usually near the end of the main procedure
 after the widgets have been declared and packed). MainLoop; is actually
 a function call and you may see it written as MainLoop();, 
 &Tk::MainLoop;, &Tk::MainLoop();, etc. 
 
 Note the use of the -> infix dereference operator. Most things in calls to
 perl/Tk routines are passed by reference. 
 
 Note also the use of the => operator which is simply a synonym for the
 comma operator. In other words, the arguments that get passed to Label
 and Button in the above example are good old perl associative arrays (perl
 5 people prefer to call them "hashes" however). Indeed, we might have
 written the above as: 
 
     #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
 
     use strict;
     use Tk;
 
     my $main = new MainWindow;
     $main->Label(-text , 'Hello World!'
                  )->pack;
     $main->Button(-text , 'Quit',
                   -command , sub{exit}
                   )->pack;
     MainLoop;
 
 Or even as: 
 
     #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
     use strict;
     use Tk;
     my $main = new MainWindow;
 
     my %hello = ('-text','Hello World!');
     my %quit_com = ('-text' => 'Quit', '-command' => sub{exit});
 
     $main->Label(%hello)->pack;
     $main->Button(%quit_com)->pack;
     MainLoop;
 
 Note however, that the use of the => in the first method of writing this
 script makes it look more "Tcl-ish" :-). 
 
 Lastly, we note the extensive use of the my function in most perl/Tk
 programs. my is roughly equivalent to local in Perl 4 - but is purported to
 be "faster and safer" as well as much more strictly local in scope. See 
 perlfunc(1) manpage for more information on my. 
 
 Other examples of code may be found in the perl5/Tk/demos/
 directory and in perl5/Tk/demos/widget_lib/. 
 
 (A variant on this scipt called hello is available in the file 
 perl5/Tk/demos/hello in your own pTk distribution. Also, Source
 code for this and other examples from UserGuide.pod may be found at 
 http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/pod/. To load code from the web save as
 a local filename, edit the first line to point to your perl interpreter, then: 
 chmod u+x filename, then execute: filename.) 
 
 ______________________________________________________________________
 
 
 
 8. What widget types are available under perl/Tk? 
 
 The following Tk widget primitives are available under perl/Tk: 
 
  o Button 
  o Radiobutton 
  o Checkbutton 
  o Listbox 
  o Scrollbar 
  o Entry 
  o Text 
  o Canvas 
  o Frame 
  o Toplevel 
  o Scale 
  o Menu 
  o Menubutton 
 
 A good introduction to these primitives and how they may be used in
 conjunction with each other may be found in the widget demo script. Note
 that all the widget demos have a "Show Code" button. To help figure out
 what is happening in the script you may, when the window appears, edit the
 text and instrument the code with print statements and then simply press
 "Rerun Demo". Another place to see examples of the primitives (on the
 web) is at: 
 
     http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/ptk/ptkIMG.html (FAQ image supplement)
 

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