Mastering Perl/TK: Graphical User Interfaces in Perl

I had a Perl/Tk application started and my customer was impressed but when I received this book, I was able to perform a number of GUI items which were beyond the capacity of the Learning Perl/Tk which I had been previously using or the Internet queries I had used. The applications were easy to find using the index and easy to implement. The depth of this book was sufficient to take my application to a much more sophisticated level, closer to what I could have done using JAVA. I had been unable to find the answers found here on either the Internet or the previous Perl Books I had used.

This book has so far given me all the information I've needed to write usable GUIs. However, I share the concern expressed by other reviewers that the the titles 'Learning Perl/Tk' and 'Mastering Perl/Tk' can be misleading. While it's reasonable to assume that the 'Learning' volume is introductory/tutorial while the 'Mastering' volume is for advanced techniques, this is not the case. The 'History of this Book' section of the preface describes it as an expansion of 'Learning Perl/Tk', not a sequel or supplement. There is no need to buy both books.

I picked this book up and learned enough from it to write (in a few weeks) a nice little GUI-based data display program that's being used to monitor train schedule adherence at the US's second-largest subway system. So obviously the book is useful.But it's also a bit frustrating. The index is almost completely useless; 90% of the time I do not find anything remotely related to the word on the page that it's supposed to be on. Sometimes if I go back and forth a dozen pages I think I find the actual page. There are a fair number of typos that I discovered (most of which are, admittedly, corrected on O'Reilly's web site.) There's this bizarre example of having two MainWindows in the same application, something that mislead *me* into trying the same thing before I discovered how awfully awkward it was.So while the book was excellent for getting me "jump-started" into the world of Perl/Tk, I do not use it much as a reference anymore. Now that I know the ropes, the man pages get me to the information much more quickly than this book.

Fortunately, this book didn't disappoint me, it lived up to all the hype I'd heard, and had begun to anticipate, two months before it was available. The index and table of contents are excellent (a must for any good reference book). The index seems very thorough and takes up about 30 pages. The table of contents, and thus the book, is laid out in a manner that makes it easy to find topics/subtopics of interest. There is a 60-page appendix table "Options and Default Values for Each Widget" which I've already placed a stickem on for quick reference. The appendix would have been even more invaluable if each widget (and possibly some lesser used/known attributes) had a page number reference so one doesn't have to find an entry there, and then have to look it up a second time in the index to find more details. There is also another appendix that contains complete program listings for fun/useful programs like progress bars, MP3 player, RPN calculator, etc. They are useful as extensive examples of Perl/Tk code, if nothing else. The only downside is that there are no electronic copies (CD or web links) to these programs and some are rather lengthy. Although I consider myself a beginner with Perl/Tk, I believe that it will also serve as an invaluable reference to advanced users of Perl/Tk and have heard from at least one or two experienced users via chat that it is far superior to Nancy Walsh's first book Learning Perl/Tk. I browsed the first book and opted not to purchase it, but this book is well worth the price.Note to the reviewer from Peoria. Did you mean to review the pocket reference instead of the full book? Otherwise, your last comment about "moving up" to Mastering Perl/Tk doesn't make any sense in relation to the rest of your review.

Fortunately, this book didn't disappoint me, it lived up to all the hype I'd heard, and had begun to anticipate, two months before it was available. The index and table of contents are excellent (a must for any good reference book). The index seems very thorough and takes up about 30 pages. The table of contents, and thus the book, is laid out in a manner that makes it easy to find topics/subtopics of interest. There is a 60-page appendix table "Options and Default Values for Each Widget" which I've already placed a stickem on for quick reference. The appendix would have been even more invaluable if each widget (and possibly some lesser used/known attributes) had a page number reference so one doesn't have to find an entry there, and then have to look it up a second time in the index to find more details. There is also another appendix that contains complete program listings for fun/useful programs like progress bars, MP3 player, RPN calculator, etc. They are useful as extensive examples of Perl/Tk code, if nothing else. The only downside is that there are no electronic copies (CD or web links) to these programs and some are rather lengthy. Although I consider myself a beginner with Perl/Tk, I believe that it will also serve as an invaluable reference to advanced users of Perl/Tk and have heard from at least one or two experienced users via chat that it is far superior to Nancy Walsh's first book Learning Perl/Tk. I browsed the first book and opted not to purchase it, but this book is well worth the price.Note to the reviewer from Medford, OR: Did you mean to review the pocket reference instead of the full book? Otherwise, your last comment about "moving up" to Mastering Perl/Tk doesn't make any sense in relation to the rest of your review.