Windows wrapper for a Perl utility

Peter Flynn

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Mar 14, 2011, 7:01:13 PM3/14/11

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I have a requirement for a standalone Windows program that will display
a single plaintext input (text-area) widget plus a "Go" button, and
execute the txt2html utility on the input and write index.html to C:\My
Documents. This must be a single .exe that can be given to users: it
must under no circumstances whatsoever require anything else to be
[pre-]installed.

I have looked at Wx, but it seems to be something you would use while
writing your own app, not a wrapper around an existing one. The txt2html
utility already does the grunt work: I just need to enshroud it in a
GUI. My (very limited) understanding of Perl/Tk is that it does a
similar job to Wx, just using the Tk widgets instead of native Windows
ones. Both appear to be excellent, but serious overkill for what I want
(but I may have misunderstood).

Is there such a thing as a utility that will wrap up an existing Perl
program with trivial graphical I/O plus whatever libraries or modules it
needs for execution, rather than a dev toolkit for writing your own
application?

I dimly remember that Tcl/Tk had something that wrapped a Tcl app in a
platform-independent GUI. Does Perl have an equivalent, with or without
Tk to handle the production of a Windows GUI?

///Peter

$Bill

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Mar 14, 2011, 7:40:56 PM3/14/11

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On 3/14/2011 3:01 PM, Peter Flynn wrote:
>
> Is there such a thing as a utility that will wrap up an existing Perl program with trivial graphical I/O plus whatever libraries or modules it needs for execution, rather than a dev toolkit for writing your own application?

If all you need is to convert a Perl script to an exe, look at
perl2exe.com 's perl2exe program (free) or Activestate.com 's
PDK (not free) utilities. I think either wx or tk would do the
job of a GUI, but tk might be a better choice if any portability
is needed.

Jack

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Mar 14, 2011, 9:17:02 PM3/14/11

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Right on $Bill

Another option is to use ppm and install Par-Packer. It has a bunch of
prerequisites but works just fine after it installs. I have my
repositories pointed to Activestate and bribes.org. I'm not sure which
site it got it from.

Anyways - it can create an exe from perl/tk - for free.

J.

(Still using build 822 5.8.8)

Ulli Horlacher

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Mar 17, 2011, 3:32:34 AM3/17/11

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Jack <good...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Another option is to use ppm and install Par-Packer. It has a bunch of
> prerequisites but works just fine after it installs. I have my
> repositories pointed to Activestate and bribes.org. I'm not sure which
> site it got it from.
>
> Anyways - it can create an exe from perl/tk - for free.

I use Par-Packer with strawberry-Perl for my applications, see:
http://fex.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/download/schwuppdiwupp.exe

Works great (using SSL is a little bit fuzzling).

--
Ullrich Horlacher Informationssysteme und Serverbetrieb
Rechenzentrum E-Mail: horl...@rus.uni-stuttgart.de
Universitaet Stuttgart Tel: ++49-711-685-65868
Allmandring 30 Fax: ++49-711-682357
70550 Stuttgart (Germany) WWW: http://www.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/

Peter Flynn

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Mar 17, 2011, 4:58:53 PM3/17/11

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Thank you all for your recommendations, I'm sure I can find something
among them.

///Peter