Rating: 
Summary: lerning perl tk
Review: I have just bought the book from Amazon.com but to my surprise it is still the january 1999 edition. Meanwhile a revised edition came out-March 1999- which corrected most of the typos and errors of the first edition. This was really disapointing.
Rating: 
Summary: A good introduction to Perl/Tk
Review: I have read the other reviews. I would like to add that what this book lacks in depth, it makes up for in breadth. I think it does a great job of discussing all aspects of the Perl/Tk GUI. It does not go into very much depth. I'm developing a app based on the associative array structure in Perl and wanted a GUI to make the data analysis transparent. This book gets you started putting together a GUI, but you quickly start searching for answers in other places!
Rating: 
Summary: Dont Bother: get the panther book instead to learn perl/tk
Review: I started learning perl/tk from the panther book (O`Reilly's Advanced Perl Programming). While the panther gave me a fantastic start to perl/tk, I eagerly awaited the release of learning perl/tk. When I finally got it, what a disappointment!! It was way too basic and the shallow, repetative examples did not help at all. Okay, if I need to see what a grooved vs sunken label looks like, I go to the learning perl/tk book (but only cuz I already wasted my money buying it). But time and again, if I have a real perl/tk problem, I go back to the panther and extrapolate the answer from the clearly presented realworld perl/tk examples.O'Reilly defended itself on the perl/tk newgroup saying they were aiming for middle-of-the-road as opposed to too advanced, in my opinion they definitely missed middle-of-the-road and wrote learning perl/tk for the user with no imagination and no desire to create useful, realworld GUI's
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent Perl/Tk primer
Review: I used this book to learn the basics of Tk with Perl under Windows, and found it a fine, concise and clear reference. It got me quickly to the point of being able to develop useful graphical applications and gave what I felt to be a good grounding in important concepts and points. It does not address absolutely everything you will eventually need to know, but at least you will have a good grounding and probably find the subsequent learning curve a lot shallower as a result. Important coverage of the geometry managers (pack, place and grid) is well presented and good examples are given. Numerous other possibly trivial but extremely helpful things are here too: how to set the size and initial screen location of Tk-generated window (use the 'geometry' method), a good discussion of the colour-management issues of the various widgets - including how to find the file of colour definitions under various operating systems, and a clear explanation of the various ways to call subroutines (and pass parameters to them) using '-command'. Ms. Walsh's style is light and conversational, not at all 'difficult' and without the usual 'clever geek' frills (for example, I personally hate the use of 'foo' and 'bar' as variable and function names everywhere in computing books - it smacks of self-congratulatory cleverness, and more than a tad 'Oh, don't you get it?'). Fortunately that is absent here. Highly recommended if you are new to Tk under Perl, as it contains essential information and is well written and presented. Definitely worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: The *BEST* (currently available) book on Perl/Tk
Review: I've searched numerous places for a book on Perl/Tk. This book is without a doubt the BEST/only text I've found to date. If you don't know anything about Perl or GUIs, this is probably not a book for you. If you do have some experience with Perl and/or GUIs, this is the BEST/only choice for you. I (a person with some++ experience with Perl, and some experience with GUIs) found it VERY helpfull and informative.
Rating:
Summary: at least one problem I found
Review: On page 160, in the text widget chapter, a canvas widget is created: $t=$mw->Scrolled ("Text") ... But Canvas widgets are not introduced until a later chapter. This is not so bad, but, then $t is used later, page 172 with no explanation of whether the get function can be used with text widgets without creating a canvas widget first: $t = $text->get(i1, [ i2]); Very confusing and incomplete. Unless I'm missing something. Otherwise, I guess this book got me started. Not a bad book.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed. Included module documentation is better.
Review: Sadly, I found Learning Perl/Tk fairly dissapointing from both the Perl and Tk side. The examples are trivial and I thought (for a beginner book) the descriptions were awful and there weren't enough code examples. The demo scripts and documentation included in the Tk module were a lot more instructive for me.
Rating:
Summary: Poor editing, weak descrip. of methods, no complete examples
Review: The discussion of most widgets starts with what looks like a cut-n-paste block of text describing (again and again) the options. How many times does one need to be told that -foreground sets the color of the text? This builds bulk (pages) but doesn't add value. The treatment of methods is scatter-shot at best with very little information provided. No significant example __anywhere__ (eg, a simple addressbook app).
Rating:
Summary: Little to no help
Review: The Hello, World! program doesn't work as printed. The menu bars don't work as presented. While I don't doubt Ms. Walsh knows Perl/Tk, this book, even when accurate, is a scattershot surface look at Tk. O'Reilly is usually much better than this (as a matter of fact, I'm off to look at Advanced Perl, based on someone else's recommendation). I'm not sure who this book was aimed at, but I can't imagine anyone finding it terribly useful.
Rating:
Summary: Useless without examples
Review: The negative reviews almost scared me away from this book. It was just what I was looking for. Perhaps some of the negative reviewers are too advanced for this book. If that is the case, I have to ask why they purchased the book in the first place. If you want to learn Perl/Tk, this is an excellent book.
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