Gtk2::Ex::FormFactory::Intro 0.65

Gtk2::Ex::FormFactory::Intro is an introduction into the FormFactory framework.

The Gtk2::Ex::FormFactory framework is for Perl Gtk2 developers who (at least partially agree with these statements:

GUI programming is fun but often boring
A lot of tasks in GUI programming are similar and misleads the lazy programmer to do too much Copy'n Paste
RAD tools like Glade are fine for small applications but not if you want to have a consistent look and feel in bigger and modular applications

Gtk2::Ex::FormFactory tries to help you with these issues by

Strictly separating GUI design, application logic and data structures
Giving the developer a more declarative style of defining the structure of your GUI
Giving the developer the possibility of definiting the design of the GUI at a single spot in your program
Being lightweight and easy to learn.

Enough buzzwords

Imagine you want to build a configuration dialog for your application, which consists of a notebook, to distinguish several topics, each containing a bunch of simpler widgets (in the following example a single text entry). Also it should have the usual Ok and Cancel buttons.

The straight approach often is to code all the stuff by hand or "draw" all widgets using Glade. At any rate you need to take care of:

Consistent look and feel, e.g. labels should be bold and properly aligned to the widgets; the widgets iteslf should have some space around them, buttons should always be aligned to the form above etc.
Initializing the widgets with the actual content of your configuration data
Either connecting a lot of signals to track the changes the user made. This would apply all changes straight to your internal data structure, which may make implementing the Cancel button difficult or impossible
Or grabbing all (changed) data from the widgets, when the user hit the Ok button resp. simply close the window, when the user hit the Cancel button

That's a lot of stuff, which needs to be repeated for every single dialog in your application. No fun anymore.

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Requirements:

· Perl