Learning Perl/Tk

Appendix B. Operating System Differences

Perl was originally written for Unix systems. The Tk module was meant for use with the X Window System, which is the graphical user interface associated with Unix. Since then, Perl has been ported for use on many other platforms, including Macintosh and Microsoft Windows (both 95 and NT). The same is true of the Tk module, although the ports for it followed along a bit more slowly. So now we have Perl available on all platforms and Perl/Tk available for both the X Window System (which can be emulated or run on many different platforms) and Microsoft Windows.

There are very few differences between how Perl/Tk operates on the Unix X Window System and how it operates on Microsoft Windows. Most of the differences come about because Microsoft Windows doesn't have all of the different functions that the X Window System has. Throughout this book, you may have seen references to a method that didn't work on Windows 95 or that worked differently on Windows 95. I won't be covering all those minor differences again. One big difference between Unix and Windows is how to specify fonts. Appendix C, covers font specifications in detail; see that appendix for information for both Unix and Windows.