Prima(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Prima(3)
NAME
Prima - a perl graphic toolkit
SYNOPSIS
use Prima qw(Application Buttons);
new Prima::MainWindow(
text => 'Hello world!',
size => [ 200, 200],
)-> insert( Button =>
centered => 1,
text => 'Hello world!',
onClick => sub { $::application-> close },
);
run Prima;
DESCRIPTION
The toolkit is combined from two basic set of classes - core and external. The core classes are coded in C and form a base line for every
Prima object written in perl. The usage of C is possible together with the toolkit; however, its full power is revealed in the perl domain.
The external classes present easily expandable set of widgets, written completely in perl and communicating with the system using Prima
library calls.
The core classes form an hierarchy, which is displayed below:
Prima::Object
Prima::Component
Prima::AbstractMenu
Prima::AccelTable
Prima::Menu
Prima::Popup
Prima::Clipboard
Prima::Drawable
Prima::DeviceBitmap
Prima::Printer
Prima::Image
Prima::Icon
Prima::File
Prima::Timer
Prima::Widget
Prima::Application
Prima::Window
The external classes are derived from these; the list of widget classes can be found below in "SEE ALSO".
BASIC PROGRAM
The very basic code shown in "SYNOPSIS" is explained here. The code creates a window with 'Hello, world' title and a centered button with
the same text. The program terminates after the button is pressed.
A basic construct for a program written with Prima obviously requires
use Prima;
code; however, the effective programming requires usage of the other modules, for example, "Prima::Buttons", which contains set of button
widgets. "Prima.pm" module can be invoked with a list of such modules, which makes the construction
use Prima;
use Prima::Application;
use Prima::Buttons;
shorter by using the following scheme:
use Prima qw(Application Buttons);
Another basic issue is the event loop, which is called by
run Prima;
sentence and requires a "Prima::Application" object to be created beforehand. Invoking "Prima::Application" standard module is one of the
possible ways to create an application object. The program usually terminates after the event loop is finished.
The window is created by invoking
new Prima::Window();
or
Prima::Window-> create()
code with the additional parameters. Actually, all Prima objects are created by such a scheme. The class name is passed as the first
parameter, and a custom set of parameters is passed afterwards. These parameters are usually represented in a hash syntax, although
actually passed as an array. The hash syntax is preferred for the code readability:
$new_object = new Class(
parameter => value,
parameter => value,
...
);
Here, parameters are the class properties names, and differ from class to class. Classes often have common properties, primarily due to the
object inheritance.
In the example, the following properties are set :
Window::text
Window::size
Button::text
Button::centered
Button::onClick
Property values can be of any type, given that they are scalar. As depicted here, "::text" property accepts a string, "::size" - an
anonymous array of two integers and "onClick" - a sub.
onXxxx are special properties that form a class of events, which share the "new"/"create" syntax, and are additive when the regular
properties are substitutive (read more in Prima::Object). Events are called in the object context when a specific condition occurs. The
"onClick" event here, for example, is called when the user presses (or otherwise activates) the button.
API
This section describes miscellaneous methods, registered in "Prima::" namespace.
message TEXT
Displays a system message box with TEXT.
run Enters the program event loop. The loop is ended when "Prima::Application"'s "destroy" or "close" method is called.
parse_argv @ARGS
Parses prima options from @ARGS, returns unparsed arguments.
OPTIONS
Prima applications do not have a portable set of arguments; it depends on the particular platform. Run
perl -e '$ARGV[0]=q(--help); require Prima'
or any Prima program with "--help" argument to get the list of supported arguments. Programmaticaly, setting and obtaining these options
can be done by using "Prima::options" routine.
In cases where Prima argument parsing conflicts with application options, use Prima::noARGV to disable automatic parsing; also see
parse_argv. Alternatively, the construct
BEGIN { local @ARGV; require Prima; }
will also do.
SEE ALSO
The toolkit documentation is divided by several subjects, and the information can be found in the following files:
Tutorials
Prima::tutorial - introductory tutorial
Core toolkit classes
Prima::Object - basic object concepts, properties, events
Prima::Classes - binder module for the core classes
Prima::Drawable - 2-D graphic interface
Prima::Image - bitmap routines
Prima::image-load - image subsystem and file operations
Prima::Widget - window management
o Prima::Widget::pack - Tk::pack geometry manager
o Prima::Widget::place - Tk::place geometry manager
Prima::Window - top-level window management
Prima::Clipboard - GUI interprocess data exchange
Prima::Menu - pull-down and pop-up menu objects
Prima::Timer - programmable periodical events
Prima::Application - root of widget objects hierarchy
Prima::Printer - system printing services
Prima::File - asynchronous stream I/O
Widget library
Prima::Buttons - buttons and button grouping widgets
Prima::Calendar - calendar widget
Prima::ComboBox - combo box widget
Prima::DetailedList - multi-column list viewer with controlling header widget
Prima::DetailedOutline - a multi-column outline viewer with controlling header widget
Prima::DockManager - advanced dockable widgets
Prima::Docks - dockable widgets
Prima::Edit - text editor widget
Prima::ExtLists - listbox with checkboxes
Prima::FrameSet - frameset widget class
Prima::Grids - grid widgets
Prima::Header - a multi-tabbed header widget
Prima::HelpViewer - the built-in POD file browser
Prima::Image::TransparencyControl - standard dialog for transparent color index selection
Prima::ImageViewer - bitmap viewer
Prima::InputLine - input line widget
Prima::KeySelector - key combination widget and routines
Prima::Label - static text widget
Prima::Lists - user-selectable item list widgets
Prima::MDI - top-level windows emulation classes
Prima::Notebooks - multipage widgets
Prima::Outlines - tree view widgets
Prima::PodView - POD browser widget
Prima::ScrollBar - scroll bars
Prima::ScrollWidget - scrollable generic document widget
Prima::Sliders - sliding bars, spin buttons and input lines, dial widget etc.
Prima::StartupWindow - a simplistic startup banner window
Prima::TextView - rich text browser widget
Prima::Themes - widget themes manager
Standard dialogs
Prima::ColorDialog - color selection facilities
Prima::EditDialog - find and replace dialogs
Prima::FileDialog - file system related widgets and dialogs
Prima::FontDialog - font dialog
Prima::ImageDialog - image file open and save dialogs
Prima::MsgBox - message and input dialog boxes
Prima::PrintDialog - standard printer setup dialog
Prima::StdDlg - wrapper module to the toolkit standard dialogs
Visual Builder
VB - Visual Builder for the Prima toolkit
Prima::VB::VBLoader - Visual Builder file loader
cfgmaint - configuration tool for Visual Builder
Prima::VB::CfgMaint - maintains visual builder widget palette configuration
PostScript printer interface
Prima::PS::Drawable - PostScript interface to "Prima::Drawable"
Prima::PS::Encodings - latin-based encodings
Prima::PS::Fonts - PostScript device fonts metrics
Prima::PS::Printer - PostScript interface to "Prima::Printer"
C interface to the toolkit
Prima::internals - Internal architecture
Prima::codecs - Step-by-step image codec creation
gencls - "gencls", a class compiler tool.
Miscellaneous
Prima::faq - frequently asked questions
Prima::Const - predefined toolkit constants
Prima::EventHook - event filtering
Prima::Image::AnimateGIF - animate gif files
Prima::IniFile - support of Windows-like initialization files
Prima::IntUtils - internal functions
Prima::StdBitmap - shared access to the standard toolkit bitmaps
Prima::Stress - stress test module
Prima::Tie - tie widget properties to scalars or arrays
Prima::Utils - miscellaneous routines
Prima::Widgets - miscellaneous widget classes
Prima::gp-problems - Graphic subsystem portability issues
Prima::X11 - usage guide for X11 environment
Class information
The Prima manual pages often provide information for more than one Prima class. To quickly find out the manual page of a desired
class, as well as display the inheritance information, use "p-class" command. The command can produce output in text and pod formats;
the latter feature is used by the standard Prima documentation viewer "podview" ( see File/Run/p-class ).
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 1997, 2003 The Protein Laboratory, University of Copenhagen. All rights reserved.
Copyright 2004 Dmitry Karasik. All rights reserved.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
AUTHORS
Dmitry Karasik <dmitry@karasik.eu.org>, Anton Berezin <tobez@tobez.org>, Vadim Belman <voland@lflat.org>,
perl v5.14.2 2009-02-24 Prima(3)