R – How to enhance the look of the Perl/TK GUI under Perl 5.004

perlperltktkuser interface

I have an application that is built to work on Windows, Linux, and Solaris that uses the Perl/TK GUI. Due to constraints, we are limited to Perl/TK only. Moreover, we are limited to an old Perl/Tk version, 5.00404.

I'd like to work within these limitations to make the GUI look as nice and modern as possible.

Are there any web-resources that have TK design schemes (for buttons, frames, colors, etc) that could assist me in this endeavor?

I am also looking for modernization advices like the one that I found here:

If you're finding that your Tk apps look a little ugly on X-based systems, try adding the following lines to the top of your script:
$mw->optionAdd("*font", "-*-arial-normal-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-*-*");
$mw->optionAdd("*borderWidth", 1);

Best Answer

Try using images instead of button elements, then you can have whatever style you like and the fonts can be baked in. This will work for pretty much any element where the contents are not dynamic - including backgrounds on panes and such. Granted it's more work but it does solve your problem, especially if you have a competent artist in your project group.

Related Solutions

Perl – How to start an interactive console for Perl

You can use the perl debugger on a trivial program, like so:

perl -de1

Alternatively there's Alexis Sukrieh's Perl Console application, but I haven't used it.

C# – How to update the GUI from another thread

The simplest way is an anonymous method passed into Label.Invoke:

// Running on the worker thread
string newText = "abc";
form.Label.Invoke((MethodInvoker)delegate {
    // Running on the UI thread
    form.Label.Text = newText;
});
// Back on the worker thread

Notice that Invoke blocks execution until it completes--this is synchronous code. The question doesn't ask about asynchronous code, but there is lots of content on Stack Overflow about writing asynchronous code when you want to learn about it.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Perl – How to start an interactive console for Perl

C# – How to update the GUI from another thread

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