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NAME

Prima - a perl graphic toolkit

SYNOPSIS

        use Prima qw(Application Buttons);

        Prima::MainWindow->new(
                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::MainWindow->new();

or

        Prima::MainWindow-> 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->new(
                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::Region - generic shape for clipping and hit testing

Prima::Image - bitmap routines

Prima::image-load - image subsystem and file operations

Prima::Widget - window management

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::Spinner - spinner animation

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

Drawing helpers

Prima::Drawable::CurvedText - fit text to path

Prima::Drawable::Gradient - gradient fills for primitives

Prima::Drawable::Path - stroke and fill complex paths

Prima::Drawable::Subcanvas - paint a hierarchy of widgets to any drawable

Visual Builder

VB - Visual Builder for the Prima toolkit

Prima::VB::VBLoader - Visual Builder file loader

prima-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

prima-gencls - prima-gencls, a class compiler tool.

Miscellaneous

Prima::faq - frequently asked questions

Prima::Bidi - bi-directional text input and output

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 prima-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/prima-class ).

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 1997-2003 The Protein Laboratory, University of Copenhagen. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2004-2012 Dmitry Karasik. All rights reserved.

This program is distributed under the BSD License.

AUTHORS

Dmitry Karasik <dmitry@karasik.eu.org>, Anton Berezin <tobez@tobez.org>, Vadim Belman <voland@lflat.org>,