Motif Programming Manual - Volume Six A

ISBN  1-56592-016-3   Price  approximately £25  UK
Dan Heller and Paula M. Ferguson                  26 Chapters, 1 Appendix and index in 341 pages
 

Chapter List
 
 
 

1  Introduction to Perl/Tk
2  Geometry Management
3  The Basic Function
4  Checkbuttons and Radio Buttons
5  Label and Entry Widgets
6  Scrollbars
7  The Listbox Widget
8  The Text Widget
9  The Canvas Widget
10  The Scale Widget
11  Menus
12  Frames
13  Toplevel Widgets
14  Binding Events
15  Composite Widgets
16  Methods for any Widget
 
Appendix A
  Configuring Widgets with configure and cget
Appendix B
  Operating System Differences
Appendix C
  Fonts
Synopsis

        Many Unix users have been able to use Perl for many years.   This particular publication gives some clues about more recent developments and what can be done with Perl/Tk and widgets.

 
Review

        As with all O'Reilly books the entire concept is well thought out from beginning to end.  You only have to mention the name O'Reilly and everyone understands what it means :-)  The preface begins with the following....

"What You Should Know Already

To get the most out of this book, you should already know the basics of Perl (specifically, Perl version 5).  You should be familiar enough with Perl to be able to at least read some code and know what the code is doing.   You don't have to be a Perl guru or Perl hacker to learn Perl/Tk, but it will help if you feel comfortable with the language."


There is an introduction to the widget with configuration options and methods for fine tuning the behaviour of the widget.  There are also examples which encourage the reader to use the widget and it's applications.  The intro goes on to discuss ideas such as why do I need a graphical interface and the fact that Perl/Tk isn't just for Unix it can be used for Win95/98 and NT.  A traditional Hello World example is given next and some ideas about geometry management are introduced.

The rest of the book goes into a fair bit of detail about the widgets and what to do with them to place them and introduce other sophisticated options that are not too well known to most folk.

If you want a greater undestanding of the world of Perl/Tk programing then you will probably want to buy this book and at about £26 it's not too expensive.

Review by  Richard Ibbotson