Perl Books
Mastering Perl/Tk
Format: Paperback
Author: Stephen O. Lidie
ReleaseDate: January, 2002
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Rating:
Get this one INSTEAD of 'Learning Perl/Tk', not in addition to
However, I share the concern
expressed by other reviewers that the the titles 'Learning
Perl/Tk' and 'Mastering Perl/Tk' can be misleading. This book has so far given me all the information I've
needed to write usable GUIs. While
it's reasonable to assume that the 'Learning' volume is
introductory/tutorial while the 'Mastering' volume is for
advanced techniques, this is not the case. The 'History of
this Book' section of the preface describes it as an
expansion of 'Learning Perl/Tk', not a sequel or supplement.
There is no need to buy both books.
.
Tries to be all things 
"Learning Perl/Tk" needs to be reworked to be more of a tutorial in the same spirit as "Learning Perl. This book tries to be all things to all people." "Mastering Perl/Tk" needs to be split into two works--one like "Programming Perl" and another like "Perl in a Nutshell. " It's hard to master Perl/Tk when you have to try to swallow it all in one gulp. It can be done, but you may suffer with a case of indigestion for a while.
A nice introduction, but not a reference
So obviously the book is useful. I picked this book up and learned enough from it to write (in a few weeks) a nice little GUI-based data display program that's being used to monitor train schedule adherence at the US's second-largest subway system.
But it's also a bit frustrating. The index is almost completely useless; 90% of the time I do not find anything remotely related to the word on the page that it's supposed to be on. Sometimes if I go back and forth a dozen pages I think I find the actual page. There are a fair number of typos that I discovered (most of which are, admittedly, corrected on O'Reilly's web site. ) There's this bizarre example of having two MainWindows in the same application, something that mislead *me* into trying the same thing before I discovered how awfully awkward it was. So while the book was excellent for getting me "jump-started" into the world of Perl/Tk, I do not use it much as a reference anymore. Now that I know the ropes, the man pages get me to the information much more quickly than this book.
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