Re^3: Accessible GUI Applications in Perl

[zentara]

I would tend to steer clear of GTK. In the nearly 8 years that I've been running Linux on the destkop, I have seen far too many problems with applications not installing correctly due to various GTK dependencies.

That may be true of Gnome2 apps, which is a complex layer on top of Gtk2. I try to avoid Gnome2 apps myself.

But plain Gtk2 apps are quite easy to install, and Perl/Gtk2 only need the most basic libs....Cairo, Pango, Glib, and Gtk2, and they install easily on linux. You may have problems, if you don't set the prefix right in the compile options, and you get multiple lib sets, or overwrite a lib needed by some app compiled for you by the distribution's authors.

But if you don't use rpms, and precompiled packages, and compile all your Gtk2 apps yourself, there are very few problems. The only exception is Gtk2 on MS Windows.....that still is pretty bad. The only version available is out-of-date, and won't work with Perl 5.10.

As the number of libs needed by systems increase and become increasingly intertwined, something like Ubuntu is looking good. I, like you, prefer my ICEWM on Slackware, which is almost twice as fast loading and running than Ubuntu; but I really am impressed with the Synaptics package manager, for keeping you up to date, and installing pre-requisite libs when you want an app. For the average computer user out there, who dosn't want to deal with maintaining their own libs, Ubuntu is very good.

Also since Gtk2 has a theme manager, in ~.gtkrc-2.0, you can set large default fonts, and high contrast color themes, which would be enough for most people. Accessibility can mean many things to different people, poor vision, deaf, blind, no limbs, etc.

[smiffy]

I think that what I would conclude from what you are saying is that GTK2 is probably worth consideration if we control the environment in which our software can be run. (Such as if we could specify Linux/Gnome or Solaris/Gnome.)

In the case of businesses and institutions, this could well be the case - and we could also save a fortune on AT software licenses using Open Source ATs on an Open Source platform. I know for a fact that the JAWS screen reader is not cheap.

Otherwise, however, when looking at deploying Perl/GUI applications cross-platform, Wx/Perl is looking to be the better candidate. Thanks for your input into this.

[AZed]

The only exception is Gtk2 on MS Windows.....that still is pretty bad. The only version available is out-of-date, and won't work with Perl 5.10.

Ehwha? Under ActiveState Perl 5.10 the PPMs for GTK2 installed and worked just fine (from Trouchelle or UWinnipeg, I think).

[zentara]

I'm glad you had better luck than me. I gave up after Vista said I couldn't download a file because my security settings wouldn't allow it. I'll have to try again.

<UPDATE>

Yeah it's good, go to trouchell repository and follow the instructions for ppm4 and perl 5.10. Thanks for pointing it out.

<UPDATE2>

Sh*t! Now my apps are complaining about no Cairo.dll or libpng12.dll. The repository has a libpng13.dll but no 12. Eh... back to Linux.

<Fixed> There is something about the libpng naming , and the correct dll at libpng12-0.dll . Jesss....it wasn't a cakewalk. :-)