Tk is good, has probably the most documentation of all the GUI toolkits for perl and it's cross-platform. It doesn't really look "window-like", though.

wxPerl is crossplatform too, but looks and behaves much more like a native platform GUI. The docs are a bit sparse, so you'll need to translate a lot from the C++ API docs to Perl if you want to do anything special.

Gtk and Gtk2 I haven't tried to use in years, so I'm not sure what their status is (or even if they run on windows). SDL is nice if you want moving graphics and sounds.

Tk *does* look natively on Windows, when used wisely: http://tktable.sourceforge.net/tile/screenshots/windowsxp.html

More to that, you can have windows look-n-feel on linux, and many different similar things.

As for Gtk2, I was disappointed by its usage on Windows: quite old binaries, which are hard to re-build (many dependencies on different GNU libraries).
Also, Gtk2 binaries on Windows occupy 18Mbytes on my system, and, while widgets are interesting to see, they are not native look-n-feel ...

At least Tcl/Tk is much much more ligthweight than Gtk2, easier to setup, rebuld, develop/distribute software and use.

One approach that is rarely mentioned, but cost-effective (for some), is to simply use HTML pages as a front-end for any of your perl scripts. Every version of Windows (98 or later iirc) ships with support for HTML applications. If you already have ActiveState installed, then you can design, deploy and maintain full-fledged GUI front-ends for perl on any windows box in your shop using the same HTML that works in MSIE. There is nothing else you need to install, no need to use VB or VBscript, no need for additional OCX or OLE controls or applets.

To determine whether this is cost-effective for you, consider: (1)time to learn; do you already know how to work with one of the GUI systems (perl/tk) (wxWindows) (MSIE HTML)?; (2)time to acquaint users; is your user base familiar with the GUI apps of any of the above environments? End users can be amazingly picky about non-functionality-centric issues when it comes to GUI, so this is one reason why some complain about the look and feel of perl/tk, or HTML, as contrasted to 'desktop' GUI apps.

More Information

MSDN is notorious for routinely changing the links on their site, so here are some search keywords links to MSDN search:
Perl of Wisdom and
perlscript and
HTML Applications

It's like Visual Basic but in Perl.

Slap it on! :)

I would second and thrid the fact to use Tk. I have been using Tk to slap GUIs on my perl code so that users have a recognizable interface and I have recognizable data when they are done. The nice thing is with a verly little work Tk will work the same on Linux, Unix, Max OSX and Windows. And the consitency in my opinion is much better than java. But I digress.

use Tk;
[download]

I was going to say QT (see TrollTech) is another option, but perlfan's post about TK being in ActiveState is a good call.

Actually you can do this entirely with freely available components if you can do without the GUI designer tools in Visual studio, the VB.Net is available in the free to download .NET Framework SDK from which you can build your interface and you can create Windows Scripting Components using Perl as described in Re: Creating a COM/OLE server, Personally I would go with C# rather than VB.Net but that's a matter of taste I guess.

/J\

Thanks to all who replied. I am not really supposed to install anything at all, and so additional resources such as VB.NET et al are not good options, but I am reading up on Perl/Tk, and I am getting what I need. Thanks again!