[pm-h] Prima ... and more

[Paul Archer]

6:56am, G. Wade Johnson wrote:

> I haven't seen Prima before. A comparison might be interesting. I think the
> documentation idea is a good one. (Of course, documenting someone else's code
> is not everyone's idea of fun.<grin/>) Do you have any other impressions of
> Prima so far?
>
Hell, documenting your own code isn't the most fun thing, either. 8-)
So far, the big thing is that it seems fast, and relatively easy to use 
(since it was written for Perl specifically). It also has ties to PDL and 
another module set for doing image transformations.



> I have recently run across documentation for Gtk2-Perl
> (http://forgeftp.novell.com/exam/documentation/html/index.html). That makes
> three GUI toolkits for Perl that I've heard of.
>
Actually, there are a few more, too. In addition to Perl/Tk, Gtk/Perl, and 
Prima, there are bindings for:
FLTK (fast light toolkit, www.fltk.org) (zero documentation for the Perl interface)
WxWidgets (www.wxwidgets.org wxperl.sourceforge.net) (poor Perl docs)
Qt (www.trolltech.com)
PicoGUI (www.picogui.org)



> It might be an interesting exercise to try to build the same small project
> with all three to see how they each handle basic tasks. We could generate a
> comparison showing strengths and weaknesses.
>
that could be fun. We might start with a simple Perl/Tk app (like the one 
you used as an example in your talk earlier this year) and see how much work 
it is to port it.

Paul

>
> On Sat, 1 Oct 2005 21:33:12 -0500 (CDT)
> Paul Archer <tigger at io.com> wrote:
>
>> I've just run across a GUI toolkit called Prima (www.prima.eu.org). I was
>> wondering if anyone had evaluated/used it. I haven't used a GUI toolkit
>> before, so I don't know how it compares to Perl/TK, etc. What I do know is
>> that it was written specifically for Perl, and for what I want (display of
>> images) it's pretty fast.
>>
>> One downside that I've noticed is that the documentation isn't that good
>> (from a "how to program in Prima" perspective). There is very extensive
>> documentation online, but it is all APIs--no "here's how to use this," or
>> screenshots of different widgets. That's a downside (at least if you're new
>> to GUI programming), but I think it could also have an upside. We've been
>> talking about giving back to the community. If we agree that it's a decent
>> toolkit (Wade, I'm counting on you here), then maybe we could contribute to
>> the docs. I was thinking about taking the outline of the O'Reilly "Learning
>> Perl/Tk" book and filling it in as "Learning Prima."
>>
>> Paul
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion.  I could
>> never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
>> ---------------------- Abraham Lincoln----------------------------------
>
> -- 
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> made.                                           -- Otto von Bismarck
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