Learning Perl/Tk is a tutorial for Perl/Tk, the extension to Perl for creating graphical user interfaces. With Tk, Perl programs can be window-based rather than command-line based, with buttons, entry fields, listboxes, menus, and scrollbars. Originally developed for the Tcl language, the Perl port of the Tk toolkit liberates Perl programmers from the world of command-line options, STDIN, and STDOUT, allowing them to build graphical, event-driven applications for both Windows and UNIX. This book is aimed at Perl novices and experts alike. It explains the reasoning behind event-driven applications and drills in guidelines on how to best design graphical applications. It teaches how to implement and configure each of the Perl/Tk graphical elements step-by-step. Special attention is given to the geometry managers, which are needed to position each button, menu, label and listbox in the window frame. Although this book does not teach basic Perl, anyone who has written even the simplest Perl program should be able to learn Tk from this book. The writing is breezy and informal, and gets right to the point of what you need to know and why. The book is rife with illustrations that demonstrate how each element is drawn and how its configuration options affect its presentation. Learning Perl/Tk is for every Perl programmer who would like to implement simple, easy-to-use graphical interfaces.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 33 Ratings

An excellent Perl/Tk primer - 2003-11-17
Reviewer Rating:
I used this book to learn the basics of Tk with Perl under Windows, and found it a fine, concise and clear reference. It got me quickly to the point of being able to develop useful graphical applications and gave what I felt to be a good grounding in important concepts and points. It does not address absolutely everything you will eventually need to know, but at least you will have a good grounding and probably find the subsequent learning curve a lot shallower as a result. Important coverage of the geometry managers (pack, place and grid) is well presented and good examples are given. Numerous other possibly trivial but extremely helpful things are here too: how to set the size and initial screen location of Tk-generated window (use the 'geometry' method), a good discussion of the colour-management issues of the various widgets - including how to find the file of colour definitions under various operating systems, and a clear explanation of the various ways to call subroutines (and pass parameters to them) using '-command'.

Ms. Walsh's style is light and conversational, not at all 'difficult' and without the usual 'clever geek' frills (for example, I personally hate the use of 'foo' and 'bar' as variable and function names everywhere in computing books - it smacks of self-congratulatory cleverness, and more than a tad 'Oh, don't you get it?'). Fortunately that is absent here.

Highly recommended if you are new to Tk under Perl, as it contains essential information and is well written and presented. Definitely worth the money.

A very good reference, but not the best for a tutorial - 2003-09-24
Reviewer Rating:
I bought this book with experience with GUI programming experience in both Windows and Linux, but had never really tried TCL/Tk. Perl being my latest obsession, I decided it was time to write some graphical front-ends for my scripts. As I scoped out the field, I reallized that the pickings were slim: only 3 books soley on the TK Perl module. Figuring I wasn't ready for the "Mastering Perl/TK", I bought the "Learning Perl/Tk" (with the Pocket Reference as well). Having finished and applied the knowledge I acquired from the book, I must say that the book leaves a rather strange "after-taste". While it is certainly sufficient for actually learning Perl/Tk, it really moves rather quickly and doesn't cover much in the full scheme of things. Will you be able to write pretty GUIs for your Perl scripts? Why of course, but don't expect to learn anything too complex. I found that this book alone is really not good for learning how to create complex GUIs that are on par with standard GUI APIs found on most desktop computers, and thus some online research is neccessary.

On a more positive note, I really like the way the book is organized. Much better than "Programming Perl", "Learning Perl" or "Mastering Regular Expressions". Just about every other page has a code demonstration and screen shot of how one of the widgets/concepts is implemented. Very nice, when compared to standard O'reilly work.

In a nutshell (no pun intended), "Learning Perl/Tk" is a good reference book that introduces Perl programmers to the Tk module, but really falls short of perfection by not demonstrating the practical integrating of Tk within a Perl script. If you have experience with TCL/Tk, buy "Mastering Perl/Tk" instead, but if you have no Tk/GUI experience, pick this one up and purchase "Mastering Perl/TK" after you have the basic/intermediate concepts down.

Good tutorial - 2004-03-09
Reviewer Rating:
This is a solid tutorial that goes through the most important components in Tk and contains good illustrations. You won't become an expert (see that word "Learning" in the title?), and the writing is clear but not spectacular. Before getting this book I tried to read up on Tk on the web and spent many hours trying to get a simple text component to do my bidding. After having read this book, it took me an hour to get the entire app done. Don't repeat my mistake; get this book if you do Perl/Tk!

An adequate reference - 2003-06-25
Reviewer Rating:
This book would be more aptly titled "Perl/Tk: Lengthy Appendices, with Introduction". As some other reviewers have noted, the book presents the Perl/Tk interface in repetitive and extrodinary detail. Unfortunately, no concise summary of all this information exists on 1 or 2 pages, so the book fails to hold a niche as a desk reference.

If you're looking for raw and useful code, you'll be disappointed for sure--the book consists of almost none. The in-text examples are short and trivial, rarely serving a useful or real world application. This would not be so bad, had the author included some complete (or perhaps even partial) solutions to the suggested exercises, found at the end of nearly every chapter. Unfortunately, such code is nowhere to be found.

So what redeeming qualities does it have? I approached this book without experience with GUIs or Tk, and while learning Perl. Through the help of this book I've picked up the basics I need to create programs which allow for simple GUIs to make my programs accessible to those scared of the command line.

Very Easy to Follow - 2007-05-21
Reviewer Rating:
Although I don't program in Perl, I bought this book because it was recommended as a reference for using TK with the Ruby language, since there is no good documentation for Ruby/TK. I found the book very easy to use, and was able to make some fairly complex GUI's pretty quickly. I use the book a lot, and highly recommend it.

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