[George Peter Staplin] 07.28.2006 - TFP is my new programming system.  I've created what I call '''box programming'''.  Basically each box is an asynchronous process that communicates with other boxes via ports.  In TFP each box forks from the router, and does a unique job.  TFP is a domain-specific language built on top of Tcl.

''[lexfiend] 12-Aug-2006'' - Which begs the question: Is '''TFP''' short for '''Tcl Flow-based Programming'''?

[George Peter Staplin] 08.12.2006 - Yes.  I wrote a paper for the conference about this, and I give credit to Flow-Based Programming for inspiring what I created.  It will appear after the conference.  What's unique is my box abstraction and the domain-specific language I've created for it in Tcl.  I also used processes rather than threads, unlike some other modern implementations of FBP.  I've also changed the names of some components, because I think "router" is a better description than "scheduler" for my implementation.

The first application built with TFP is called [TFP Shell].  It's an interactive shell with image support.

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For instance here is an image box:
 box image {
  load [file join $::shellbinpath pngext2.so] Pngext2
 } takes filename {
  if {[catch {out 1 [pngext2:decode file $filename]} result]} {
   out 0 error
   out 1 $result
   return
  }
  out 0 image
 } out 2

To use that box I might have something like:
 box interactor {
  #
  # This is the init path.  It can contain procs and other startup code.
  #
  package require Tk
  load [file join $::shellbinpath megaimagetk.so]
  pack [button .b -text "Load image" -command {out 0 /path/to/somefile.png}]
  pack [label .img]
 } takes {type data} {
  switch -- $type {
   error {
    tk_messageBox -icon error -message $data
   }

   image {
    set img [image create photo]
    megaimage.to.photo $data $img
    .img configure -image $img
   }
  }
 } out 1

 
Then I connect the boxes like so:
 connect interactor 0 image 0
 connect image 0 interactor 0
 connect image 1 interactor 1
 router
 vwait forever


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What category?
[Category Control Structure] is relevant, but perhaps not spot on.
Is [Category Threads] relevant? [Category Design] is as well, because of
how applications would be partitioned.
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[Zarutian] 00:03 14. August 2006: [Flow Based Programming] is similiar