I don't know what you are doing with it, nor have I dug into it's inner workings, but I just tried it on linux, and it does the same thing. If you start it without a file to edit as arg1, it just iconifies itself. Otherwise it opens the file for editing. So I'm guessing that the iconified window may have something to do with Drag'n'Drop? I have no clue what the socket setup is for, maybe send a file to be edited over the socket? How do you use it when it's iconified?

P.S. Maybe the old-timers and experts on the newsgroup comp.lang.perl.tk would be familiar with it.