On Monday, June 11, 2001, at 02:19 PM, Anita Holmgren wrote:
> You certainly can do this. You would need to create a project using
> Project Builder and an interface using Interface Builder. You could
> then make an Objective C object that 'interacts' with your Perl script
> using NSTaks and a few NSPipes and sends the data to your interface.
>
> We do this sort of thing to build an Aqua GUI on our Tenon iTools.
The approach certainly has merit for focused applications such as
iTools where the GUI is established and the UI design known. It seems
one could use that spot approach on a per application basis but unless
one is a commercial developer creating a specific product, doing that
for every instance where one needs a Perl GUI would be tedious and
complex without higher-level aids. After all, RAD is one of the
advantages scripting languages offer over larger compiled languages. We
have have Carbon and Cocoa on the Mac using Project Builder accessible
from C, java, and ObjC already if we want a full, long development cycle.
But the reasons I (cannot speak for the rest of you here) use Perl for
some tasks on the Mac are: 1) to leverage existing code, 2) simplicity
and 3) speed to solution.
One could theoretically (and with a lot of work) create make the
graphics calls using a C-Perl framework like SWIG and avoid ObjC if one
wanted a Quartz GUI or if X was okay, there is Perl GTK which needs
work: doesn't compile out of the box unfortunately. At least my modest
skills have been unable to get ti to work.
But there seems to be no quick & dirty scripting solution to a GUI for
OSX Perl. That is (at least it is my impression) what we are trying to
come together and find here.
There's Jython for Python which works very well with Swing/Java 2, but
that doesn't run the multitude of Perl modules out there. We simply have
to press on.
