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-reference for 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.

Mastering Perl/Tk Review,  July 18 2002
Submitted by VNPANDEY   [Respond | View]

This is a good book no doubt.. Infact a lot improvement from the book Learning Perl Tk... Well I had to read this book asking it from My friend who was here for a short time.. as this book is very difficult to get in India. After reading this book, I tried to get it in shops in Bangalore, but it's not availaible...

Well It's a nice book overall.. The good thing is that one who does not has the book learning perl Tk.. does not need to worry, as nearly everything essential from that is covered in this, ofcourse in addition to that a lot of exciting stuff too regarding Perl Tk...


Mastering Perl/Tk Review,  June 16 2002
Submitted by Bill Kerekesh   [Respond | View]

In my opinion, this is the most complete reference on Perl/Tk. Well written. I especially appreciate the way the authors covered geometry management.

My one complaint, however, is the lack of availability of the example code in the book. Some selected examples can be downloaded from the O'Reilly website but the larger, more involved examples are not available. I have typed a couple code examples from the book and they wouldn't run.

Why bother publishing only some of the code examples? I would hope that, after paying $45 for the book, O'Reilly doesn't expect me to pay another $20 to gain access to the example code on line. This would be enough to keep me from buying another O'Reilly book.

This one beef aside, I would recommend this book.


Mastering Perl/Tk Review,  March 01 2002
Submitted by John Hengesbach   [Respond | View]

This is a great book. It finally puts in one place all of the elements

of Perl/Tk.

It is full of good examples and I have found it very enlightening even

though I have been using Perl/Tk to build very intense applications

for 4 years.

The only thing that jumped out at me was that there was no reference

to the Table widget. Did it fall on the editing room floor?

The explantion of the geometry managers seemed to be expanded from

Learning Perl/Tk which is very helpful as this is one of the most

difficult concepts to grasp for complex UI development.

Revisiting the Towers of Hanoi problem with a Perl/Tk visualization

was a real kick!

Books like this help expose just what a useful package Perl/Tk is and

should be recommended reading for everyone!!


Mastering Perl/Tk Review,  February 28 2002
Submitted by Kevin Kinnell   [Respond | View]

Mastering Perl/Tk is a very good book; meaning that it's a tiny bit of a disappointment as a part of "The Menagerie". The first part of the book seems to be a rehash of Learning Perl/Tk, and the rest of the material is somewhat haphazardly organized--it's all there but can sometimes be difficult to find.

Having said that, this book is a vast improvement over the TK::* perldocs, and contains numerous useful (and reasonably well explained) examples, tips and techniques.

The book also contains some real nuggets--not always directly related to Tk; the example app for downloading comic strips has a wonderful digression on creating non-blocking network processes in a Microsoft Windows environment.

The reference material is very useful, and more up to date than the "Pocket Reference" (but at 746+ pages, you won't be slipping this book into the back pocket of your jeans.)

All in all, Mastering Perl/Tk is a good buy if you need or want to learn and use Perl/Tk. Read it cover-to-cover, then be prepared to flip through the index.