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

    •   Prima::Widget::pack - Tk::pack geometry manager

    •   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>,