GTK+, a good place to start with *nix gui?

[littleman]

I've been following the tutorial at [gtk.org...] and so far I think it is very well put together. I figure GTK+ 2.0 would be a good place to start because it would be widely used by the time I write anything worth using. And I tend to use GTK applications most of the time..

So,anybody else enjoy working with QT more? Any other widget set? Lesstif?

[Josk]

I've always used either java swing or tk (with perl). Their a tad more portable. Just think...with MS you need to pay $$$ for Visual Basic, and that just runs on MS...

[sugarkane]

I've been meaning to play a bit more with PerlQT (rpm here [at.rpmfind.net], also available on CPAN) - it looks fairly nice.

LM - do you know of a Perl module for GTK+?

[bird]

As a principle, you might want to consider some of the higher level toolkits, that also tend to offer a certain amount of platform independence. Tk and WxWindows come to mind, but there are probably others. Also, the higher level the toolkit, the better your chances that you can keep with it if you should happen to switch to a different programming language later.

[littleman]

Sugarkane, I came across GTKperl,org [gtkperl.org], it looks handy. Some tutorials [gtkperl.org]

Bird, thank you for pointing out WxWindows. I'll have to read up on it.

Added:
Josk, I never been a big fan of java, though I know it makes a lot of sense in many cases. Tk does seem to be the easiest way to get productive fast.

[windsor]

Thought I'd toss in my $0.02 on lesstif..

Lesstif was/is written to provide function-call-level compatability with motif, which is commercial. There were some neat free applications written against Motif, but were only usable on commercial flavors of UNIX that shipped Motif or had Motif readily available (like Solaris or AIX). By far, the most popular application was xmcd (cd player with cddb -- in fact, xmcd was why cddb was created).

Now Motif is a steaming pile of poop. Most of my developer buddies really don't recommend picking it if you have a choice to go elsewhere. So, by virtue of emulating the API, lesstif picked up that same trait.

(Although my hat's off to the guys who did lesstif, they did a good job of making xmcd available for the free world.)

Rob++

[Josk]

littleman: Tk does seem to be the easiest way to get productive fast...

Yes...and has the advantage of being easy to deploy on windows (activestate perl + tk...what do you need vb for?)

[littleman]

Just wanted to follow up on this. Perl/TK is so darn easy to work with that I feel like I’m cheating. I wrote a GUI script that formats labels from order forms. I needed the gui to be able to clear the text area, launch the formatted text in an editable preview window before printing, and I needed a few check box to select which web site I wanted the return address to print up for.

The hardest part about it was messing with the layout so that it looked right. The functionality was a cake walk.