http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=137248

dhable has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I've been working on some prototypes using Perl/Tk running under Windows 95 and Windows 98. I've noticed the programs take a very long time to load. I was thinking about writing the production version using the Win32 API module. Has anyone converted a large GUI program from Perl/Tk to Win32 modules? Was there a performance increase?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
(tye)Re: Tk vs. Win32 API Performance Issues
by tye (Sage) on Jan 09, 2002 at 12:43 UTC

    I wouldn't be at all surprised if replacing Tk with native calls via Win32::API could make a noticeable speed improvement in your script. I also wouldn't be too surprised if the overhead of Win32::API made (at least parts of) your script slower.

    But I consider all of that irrelevent since the shear amount of work involved would seem to be prohibitive to me. (It may not even be possible due to lack of real threading support in Perl, though I doubt that).

            - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")
Re: Tk vs. Win32 API Performance Issues
by Matts (Deacon) on Jan 09, 2002 at 14:59 UTC
    What about WxPerl? I've used it a few times and I really like it, and it's "native", i.e. it uses the OS's widget library (Gtk on Linux, Windows widgets on Win32) so it's quite a bit faster than Tk.
Re: Tk vs. Win32 API Performance Issues
by theorbtwo (Prior) on Jan 09, 2002 at 12:50 UTC

    You may be better off porting from Tk to Win32::GUI instead.

    Thanks,
    James Mastros,
    Just Another Perl Scribe