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NAME

Prima - a perl graphic toolkit

SYNOPSIS

  use Prima qw(Application Buttons);

  Prima::MainWindow-> create(
      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

  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 = Class-> create(
     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 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.

SEE ALSO

The toolkit documentation is divided by several subjects, and the information can be found in the following files:

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

Prima::Window - top-level window management

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::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

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.

Prima::Make - module for automated Makefile creation

Miscellaneous

Prima::Const - predefined toolkit constants

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::Utils - miscellaneous routines

Prima::Widgets - miscellaneous widget classes

Prima::gp-problems - Graphic subsystem portability issues

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 1997, 2002 The Protein Laboratory, University of Copenhagen. 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>,