Hi folks!
I was looking at The GUI Loft, Win32::GUI and similar.
Kinda impressive! I tought it was impossible to create
Windows Application from Perl.
For years, I used to develop in VB
with some parts in C compiled in DLL called back in VB,
then I moved to Java, Perl, PHP4 and C++ Builder.
The good point with VB and C++ builder is that it's easy to use
to perform Rapid Application Development,
mostly like Loft, you seemed to get the idea. =)
I was wondering how difficult would it be to complete
the missing commonly used Windows widgets, I made a list here,
of course they are others, VB and C++ Builder have their huge list
of components, but most of them are just plug-in modules
that plain Perl already have like Database or Internet.
The GUI Loft Manual
http://www.bahnhof.se/~johanl/perl/Loft/manual.html
Typical drag'n'drop VCL components with Borland C++ Builder 5.0
http://info.borland.com/techpubs/bcppbuilder/v5/
So here's my wish list: =)
[ Some of them already exist ]
Standard:
=========
TMainMenu: Main Menu (top window menu)
TPopupMenu: Pop up Menu (right-click menu)
TLabel: Label
TEdit: Textbox
TPassword: Textbox for password
TMemo: MultiLine TextBox area
TButton: Button
TCheckBox: Check Box
TRadioButton: Radio button (element of a group)
TListBox: List box
TComboBox: Combo box
TScrollBar: Scroll bar vertical or horizontal
TRadioGroup: Panel Box container for radio buttons set
Additional: { Custom widget adjacement }
===========
TBitBtn: Image with a bitmap on it left hand side with text
TMaskEdit: TEdit with RegExp input validation mask
TStringGrid: Excel like Grid widget for text only
TDrawGrid: Excel like Grid widget for text or image
TImage: Image container
TShape: Shape object: Rectangle, oval, square, circle, rounded
box
TBevel: 3D Line seperator for visual grouping
TScrollBox: ListBox with horizontal scrolling
TCheckListBox: ListBox with check marks
Win32: {COMCTL32.DLL version 4.70 or later}
======
TTabControl: Tab page
TPageControl: Tab page controller
TRichEdit: WordPad like Memo container area with font and images
TTrackBar: Sound slider
TProgressBar: Installation like progress bar
TUpDown: Up/Down button
THotKey: HotKey tracking visible container
TMonthCalendar: Microsoft Calendar
TDateTimePicker: Microsoft Calendar inside a combo box
TTreeView: Tree view component
TListView: List view component
TStatusBar: Status bar component
TToolBar: MS Office Tool Bar container
TCoolBar: MS Office Tool Bar with scroll container
TPageScroller: MS Office Tool Bar with scroll and moveable container
System:
=======
TTimer: Auto-restart count-down Timer event driven
{SetTimer and KillTimer, and to simplify processing the WM_TIMER messages}
TMediaPlayer: Media Player button (play, pause, stop, ff, rew, prev,
next, rec, eject)
{Custom bitmap button with predefined callback}
TOleContainer: Interface to OLE 2.0 object container
{InsertObjectDialog can be called to embed or link to an OLE 2.0 object}
Internet: (Internet Explorer SDK documented on MSDN)
=========
TCppWebBrowser: Internet Explorer Embedded DCOM Container
Samples: (bunch of widget hook-up together)
========
TCSpinEdit: TextBox with up/down button embedded
Dialogs: (Windows SDK documented on MSDN)
========
TOpenDialog: Windows Open dialog
TSaveDialog: Windows Save dialog
TOpenPictureDialog: Windows Open dialog with picture preview
TSavePictureDialog: Windows Save dialog with picture preview
TFontDialog: Windows Font picker dialog
TColorDialog: Windows Color picker dialog
TPrintDialog: Windows Print dialog
TPrintSetupDialog: Windows Print setup dialog
TFindDialog: Windows Find dialog
TReplaceDialog: Windows Replace dialog
Homemade dialogs: (Windows SDK documented on MSDN)
=================
TOpenWebDialog: Windows Open dialog with Internet Explorer preview
TSaveWebDialog: Windows Save dialog with Internet Explorer preview
There is other like Office DCOM server/client component for:
Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
DDE manipulation/automation, but it's easier just to save them
as HTML page with Office 2000/XP and manipulate them in Perl instead.
There's also components for Internet connection and database,
but does can be replaced directly by good old perl module code.
By the way, is there a way to get a stand-alone
Perl GUI application, like TGL.exe ?
Even my C++ Builder application that are 300KB,
most come with 45 MB of DLL/BPL and similar in the current directory.
So having one stand-alone EXE without Perl installed would be great!
Fred P.
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