We've decided to go down the route of C#/perl for future projects, mainly due to lack of GUI goodness for perl. I've been prodding slowly at C#, dipping my toes in the water.
One thing that stumped me for about an hour today is 'optional' parameters. I was trying to call the Navigate method for the web browser control. In VB I would have ignored the optional parameters as they are optional (cunning eh?). C# doesn't think this is a good idea, and after a little digging I found you need to do:
object o = null;
webbrowser.Navigate(url, ref o, ref o, ref o, ref o);
I should also motivate myself to file some Komodo bug reports, but I feel these should have been stomped on before release. Ho Hum.
Visual Perl. If you're using the Visual Studio software, Visual Perl is very nice. You can get it at activestate.com. I think it's about $100.
PerlBuilder at solutionsoft.com. Pretty good, aimed somewhat at CGI programmers. About $150 for the standard version, $250 for the pro version.
Your free option is OpenIDE. Better than Komodo by a long shot, but then it only supports Perl.
Re:GUI support
gav on 2002-03-28T13:03:51
We paid out the $495 for ASPN Perl. I'm pretty pleased with it so far. I've only really been using Komodo as Visual Studio.NET still scares me :) Re:GUI support
ajtaylor on 2002-04-02T14:33:45
I'm downloading (very slowly) OpenIDE right now. It looks very cool, and exactly what I've been looking for running on Windoze. Over the last week I've been toying w/ Project Builder on MacOS X, and it rocks! It has all the features you'd expect out of an editor/IDE, and then some. So anything that comes close to PB is a good thing. Thanks for the link.
Re:Lack of GUI goodness?
gav on 2002-03-28T13:12:01
I have. Tk is pretty much ruled out becuase it doesn't look like a windows application. This might sound harsh, but it makes sense for us. I have experimented with Tk, I sent a small app to a client and he was frustrated by the file open dialog as it had a 'home' button that didn't work and you couldn't choose a disk/networked drive.wxPerl looks promising but the lack of documentation is a factor. I'm also not sure if I'm that keen on creating forms without a GUI. The Visual Studio
.NET GUI is very slick and impressive. Microsoft always seems to excel at this. Re:Lack of GUI goodness?
jouke on 2002-03-28T13:21:34
I agree completely on the Tk story. wxPerl indeed lacks documentation (working on it Sir!), but what do you mean by creating forms without a GUI? wxPerl is all about GUI....
Re:Lack of GUI goodness?
djberg96 on 2002-03-28T21:10:46
I sent a small app to a client and he was frustrated by the file open dialog as it had a 'home' button that didn't work and you couldn't choose a disk/networked driveYou need Tk::DirSelect (follow the link to downloads and screenshots)
Re:Lack of GUI goodness?
gav on 2002-03-29T00:56:55
I actually found that today, but couldn't get the code to work. I wanted a widget that could select a directory. Eventually I found some code that got a Tk::DirTree and worked ok (linked towards the bottom of that page). The main problem I have is that Tk programs look icky. Tk::DirSelect looks really amateur compared to today's graduated fills, recessed buttons etc on win32.
