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Dear esteemed PerlMonks

Continuing my odyssey, I need to develop an application for traversing/roaming in databases, letting the user inspect/view tables and joins in an efficient and friendly way. (On Windowz only).

Quite a while ago I decided to do it in Perl (over friendly attempts of colleagues and friends to have me use ASP .Net and C#).
I had to choose a GUI development environment. Initially I've chosen Win32::GUI. It was pretty neat, but eventually I had to drop it, since:
a. it doesn't support Unicode/UTF-8,
and b. it doesn't seem to be supported any longer.
So after considering various pieces of advice, I decided to use wxPerl.

But, I am getting more and more frustrated. Here is a concrete question, and then some more general ones:
1. It seems to me that the widget I should be using for the main purpose I listed above (namely, a user-friendly way of browsing database tables and joins) is wxListCtrl (and mainly the virtual list control). (Gurus: I'd love to get you opinion on this).
For a neat look, I need to be able:
a. to set size and font of the list control column headings;
b. to set size and font of the item lines.

The wxPerl documentation is scant. I couldn't find an example for doing that. I did find a wxPython example: at: http://wxpython-users.1045709.n5.nabble.com/ListCtrl-SetItemTextColor-SetItemFont-td2348263.html (attached to Robert Tomlin's post, Oct 15, 2006 4:55 (8th from top)):

# taken from: http://wxpython-users.1045709.n5.nabble.com/ListCtrl-Set
+ItemTextColor-SetItemFont-td2348263.html (main.py)
import wx

class MyFrame(wx.Frame):

    def __init__(self, parent, title):
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, parent, -1, title, pos=(150, 150), siz
+e=(350, 400))

        # Now create the Panel to put the other controls on.
        panel = wx.Panel(self)

        btnBold = wx.Button(panel, -1, "Bold")
        btnRed = wx.Button(panel, -1, "Red")
        self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnBold, btnBold)
        self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnRed, btnRed)

        # create a list control
        self.listControl = wx.ListCtrl(panel, style=wx.LC_REPORT, size
+=(200,100))
        self.listControl.InsertColumn(0, "Col1")
        self.listControl.InsertColumn(1, "Col2")
        self.listControl.InsertStringItem(0, "Data 1")
        self.listControl.SetStringItem(0,1, "Data 2")

        sizer = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL)
        sizer.Add(self.listControl, 0, wx.ALL, 10)
        sizer.Add(btnBold, 0, wx.ALL, 10)
        sizer.Add(btnRed, 0, wx.ALL, 10)
        panel.SetSizer(sizer)
        panel.Layout()

    def OnBold(self, evt):
        f = self.listControl.GetItemFont(0)
        f.SetWeight(wx.BOLD)
        self.listControl.SetItemFont(0, f)
    
    def OnRed(self, evt):
        self.listControl.SetItemTextColour(0, wx.RED)

class MyApp(wx.App):
    def OnInit(self):
        frame = MyFrame(None, "Demonstrate listctrl")
        self.SetTopWindow(frame)
        frame.Show(True)
        return True
        
app = MyApp(redirect=True)
app.MainLoop()
[download]

Porting this example into wxPerl:

# taken from: http://wxpython-users.1045709.n5.nabble.com/ListCtrl-Set
+ItemTextColor-SetItemFont-td2348263.html (main.py)
# ported 23 3 2013 v 0-1
use strict;
use warnings;
use Wx;
 use 5.014;
 use autodie; 
 use Carp;
 use Carp qw {cluck};
 use Carp::Always; 
 use Win32::Console;
 
 package MyFrame;
use Wx ':everything';
use Wx ':listctrl';
use Wx::Event 'EVT_BUTTON';
use parent -norequire, 'Wx::Frame';
sub new {     #1    MyFrame::
    my ($class, $parent, $title) = @_;
   my $self = $class->SUPER::new(
        $parent,    -1,         # parent window; ID -1 means any
        $title,  # title
        [150, 150 ],    # position
        [ 350, 400 ],    # size
   );
     # wx.Frame.__init__(self, parent, -1, title, pos=(150, 150), size
+=(350, 400)) (Python)

        my $panel = Wx::Panel->new($self);
        my $btnBold = Wx::Button->new($panel, -1, 'Bold', wxDefaultPos
+ition, wxDefaultSize);
        my $btnRed = Wx::Button->new($panel, -1, 'Red', wxDefaultPosit
+ion, wxDefaultSize);
        EVT_BUTTON ($self,  $btnBold, sub { $self->{listControl}->MyFr
+ame::OnBold });
        # self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnBold, btnBold)     (Python)
        EVT_BUTTON ($self, $btnRed, sub { $self->{listControl}->MyFram
+e::OnRed });
        # self.Bind(wx.EVT_BUTTON, self.OnRed, btnRed)    (Python)
          # create a list control
        $self->{listControl} = Wx::ListCtrl->new($panel, -1, wxDefault
+Position, [300,100], wxLC_REPORT);
        $self->{listControl}->InsertColumn(0, 'Col1', wxLIST_FORMAT_LE
+FT, 150);
        $self->{listControl}->InsertColumn(1, 'Col2', wxLIST_FORMAT_LE
+FT, 150);
          $self->{listControl}->InsertStringItem( 0, 'dummy' );
        $self->{listControl}->SetItemText( 0, 'Data 1');
          $self->{listControl}->SetItem( 0, 1, 'Data 3');
          $self->{listControl}->InsertStringItem( 1, 'dummy' );
        $self->{listControl}->SetItemText(1, 'Data 2');
          $self->{listControl}->SetItem( 0, 1, 'Data 3');

        my $sizer = Wx::BoxSizer->new(wxVERTICAL);
        $sizer->Add($self->{listControl}, 0, wxALL, 10);
        $sizer->Add($btnBold, 0, wxALL, 10);
        $sizer->Add($btnRed, 0, wxALL, 10);
        $panel->SetSizer($sizer);
        $panel->Layout();
        return $self;
}    #1 end sub new MyFrame::

        sub OnBold {                        #    def OnBold(self, evt)
+:    (Python)
            my $this = shift;
         my $f = $this->GetItemFont(0);
            my $f = Wx::Font->new(12, -1, wxNORMAL, wxBOLD, 0, 'arial'
+);
        $f->SetWeight(wxBOLD);
        $this->Wx::ListCtrl->SetItemFont(0, $f);
        } #1    end sub OnBold

        sub OnRed {                            # def OnRed(self, evt):
+     (Python)
            my $this = shift;
        $this->SetItemTextColour(0, wxRED);
        } #1    end sub OnRed
# end class MyFrame::        

# class MyApp(Wx::App):    (Python)
    # def OnInit(self):    (Python)
        my $frame = MyFrame->new(undef, 'Demonstrate listctrl');
        # Wx::SetTopWindow($frame);
        $frame->Show(1);
        # return True      (Python)   
my $app = Wx::SimpleApp->new;
$app->MainLoop;

1;
[download]

you note that the "Red" button works ok (makes the items red), but the "Bold" button fails, with the error message: (the program is called: "Set item font post.pl"):

Error while autoloading 'Wx::ListCtrl' at F:/Win7programs/Dwimperl/per
+l/site/lib/Wx.pm line 48
        Wx::AUTOLOAD('Wx::ListCtrl=HASH(0x26f6454)') called at Set ite
+m font post.pl line 60
        MyFrame::OnBold('Wx::ListCtrl=HASH(0x26f6454)') called at Set 
+item font post.pl line 31
        MyFrame::__ANON__('MyFrame=HASH(0x2712734)', 'Wx::CommandEvent
+=SCALAR(0x2b9f3bc)') called at Set item font post.pl line 76
        eval {...} called at F:/Win7programs/Dwimperl/perl/site/lib/Wx
+.pm line 48
[download]

So here are my case-specific questions, and some more general questions:

1. Is GetItemFont/SetItemFont implemented for Wx::ListCtrl in wxPerl? If not, how come it's not implemented; if yes, what am I doing wrong?
2. Are all methods (see here: http://docs.wxwidgets.org/2.8/wx_wxlistctrl.html#wxlistctrlgetitemfont) of the wxListCtrl widget implemented in wxPerl? wxPerl documentation led me to think so?
3. Should I stick with wxPerl and Wx::ListCtrl for this project, or should I choose some other tools?
4. This "ObjectListView" wxPython widget looks neat: http://objectlistview.sourceforge.net/python/features.html. Is there something like it in Perl?
Should I try to port it into wxPerl?
5. I had chosen using Perl (and investing time and energy in it) since I was impressed with the power and expressiveness of the language, and its internal logic; you can feel it was designed by a linguist. But, considering the dearth of support and examples (for displaying database tables in a neat GUI), should I abandon Perl and do the project in Python?

Esteemed gurus - your help and advice will be appreciated

Many TIA - Helen

In reply to wxPerl: is wxListCtrl Get/SetItemFont implemented? and further important questions by HelenCr

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