Re: extending Prima widget library...

Fiebach, Kai wrote:
> To add my 2 cents:
>
> I think Prima simply is the best GUI for Perl and I always are amazed how
> easily I can implement things and do changes to extend interfaces in case of
> need.
>
> I was especially exited once I discovered how I could use the VisualBuilder
> to create fm-files and load them dynamically via Prima::VBLoad. And being a
> Windows guy after this I was even more exited when I figured out how to bind
> all this together with ActiveStates "Perl Dev Kit" to create self-running
> Windows exe's for people without Perl and Prima installed. It is
> unbelievable how fast and modular you can create great looking software this
> way.
>
> But indeed until you are at this point the learning curve is *very* steep
> and a tutorial would be *very* helpful. Especially a tutorial that explains
> how to use the VisualBuilder and what to do to import fm files dynamically
> into your Perl app, so that you can even change your GUI independently from
> your Perl script. And it would be helpful to know which files you need to
> bind independent applications for people who do not have Prima installed.
>
> It took me hours to figure all this out via try-and-error myself. To have
> some easy cut-and-past examples indeed could help tremendously to help
> beginners:
>
> 1. How to use the VB to create/edit a window (cut-and-paste fm file)
> 2. How to load this window definition file dynamically into your Perl code
> (cut-and-past pl file)
> 3. How to link widgets via the VB to function calls of your Perl module
>
> After you know how things work all is pretty easy, but it takes a long time
> to get there. I would do a little cut-and-paste tutorial myself, but I
> simply have no time for this now, perhaps later in summer.
>
> All I can say is:
> Great work and many thanks for the fantastic tools, Dmitry and Co!
> The tech is superb, but indeed some modular Tutorials for beginners would
> make it even better :)
>
> Kai Fiebach
>
To throw in a handful of farthings of my own:

Ditto to all of Kai's accolades.

I'm new to both Prima and OO Perl in general. I agree that the
documentation is excellent. I'm very much looking forward to being at
the point where I have enough experience and built-up code to be able to
"throw together" some fairly powerful and complex applications and
replacing clunky Access ones.

So far I've created a form with a half-dozen or so widgets and gotten it
to "run" using starter.pl. That was fairly easy. Now I need to make it
actually _do_ something. An example/tutorial of how to tie a VB built
.fm file into a larger application would be *very* helpful. I think I'm
saying the say thing as Kai's point 3.
Received on Tue 13 Jan 2004 - 22:47:03 CET