Re: mixed language coding

[Paolo Molaro <lupus ximian com>]

On 06/19/01 Jim Edwards wrote:
> I tried this last week and didn´t get the response I had hoped for.
> Please allow me to try again:
>
> I have an application in Perl and another in c that I want to combine
> into a single app.  Currently the perl code uses perl/Tk and the c code
> does not have a gui.  My plan is to create a gtk+ gui using glade.   As
> I see it there are a few approachs to the multi language issue:
>
> The perl code would have one or two dialog windows that would keep the
> focus while open.  The c code is much more complex.
>
>
> 1.  Write all the gui in c and call the perl code from within callback
> wrappers written in c.
>     This seems like it would involve a lot of interface writing.

Uhm, I don't know if this makes sense: if the non-ui part is already 
written in C and you write also the GUI in C, where does perl fit?

> 2.  Write the part of the gui for the perl in perl and  the rest in c -
> I think i would then need many fewer calls from c to perl
>       possibly only two - one to setup the interface and another to
> invoke the dialog.
>
> Does anyone know of an example that does this and what kind of problems
> i might encounter?

It depends what kind of graphical interface you need or how complex is the
interface to the C code. Basically:

1) if the C interface is complex, just maintain the C program and
embed a perl interpreter that will be invoked to do the GUI stuff
(this is the way I did the perl bindings for AbiWord). perlembed
is the manpage you're looking for to do this.

2) the C interface is simple: wrap it in an XS module and use that module
in your GUI program written in perl (you will need the perlxs and perlguts
manpages for this item). This is a solution that allows for more
flexibility: it may be worth it even if the C interface is complex
(for example creating the XS module for the Gtk+ library surely was
worth it:-).

The first solution may be more simple if you don't know (or don't want
to know:-) how XS works.

lupus

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