/ 
PNI-0.07
/ PNI

NAME

PNI - Perl Node Interface

SYNOPSIS

use PNI;

my $node = PNI::NODE 'Perlfunc::Print';
$node->set_input( list => 'Hello World !' );
$node->set_input( do_print => 1 );

PNI::RUN;

DESCRIPTION

Hi! I'm an italian mathematician. I really like Perl phylosophy as Larry jokes a lot even if he is one of the masters of hacking.

PNI stands for Perl Node Interface.

It is my main project, my contribution to the great Perl community. Node programming is really interesting since makes possible to realize a program even if you have no idea about programming.

Think about genetic researchers, for example. They need to focus on protein chains, not on what is a package. Maybe they can do an extra effort and say the world "variable" or "string" or even "regular expression" and that makes them proud, but they don't care about inheritance.

They want things working and they need Perl ... but if you say Strawberry they think about yogurt, not about Windows.

There are a lot of node programming languages (VVVV, Puredata, Max/Msp) but normally they target artists and interaction designers. I saw a lot of vjs and musicians do really complex programs with those software, and they never wrote a line of code.

This is my effort to provide a node interface that brings Perl power to people who don't know the Perl language.

Blah blah blah. ( this was the h2xs command :-)

EXPORT

PNI module does not export subs, you have to call them directly. They are all uppercase and you can omit parenthesis, like

PNI::NODE 'Some::Node';

PNI::RUN;

They often delegates to other modules methods inside the PNI namespace.

SUBROUTINES/METHODS

Connects an output of a node to an input of another node.

my $source_node = PNI::NODE 'Some::Node';

my $target_node = PNI::NODE 'Another::Node';

PNI::LINK $source_node => $target_node , 'source_output_name' => 'target_input_name';

Delegates to PNI::Tree::add_link.

PNI::NODE

Creates a node by its pni type. If you write

PNI::NODE 'Some::Node'

PNI do the following steps:

  1. requires the PNI/Node/Some/Node.pm module .

  2. creates a new PNI::Node, assigns it an id and bless it as a PNI::Node::Some::Node .

  3. calls the init method as implemented in the PNI::Node::Some::Node package .

Delegates to PNI::Tree::add_node.

PNI::NODECOLLECTION

Returns available nodes in an hash reference like this:

    $node_collection = {

    node_category1 => [ qw( /node/path1 , /node/path2 , ... ) ],

    node_category2 => [ qw( /node/path1 , /node/path2 , ... ) ],

    ...

    }

PNI::RUN

Updates the tree node hierarchy and calls the task method for every loaded node.

PNI::LOOP

Starts the PNI main loop, it keeps calling PNI::RUN as fast as it can.

SEE ALSO

PNI::Node

PNI::Tree

PNI::Link

PNI::Node::Perlfunc

PNI::Node::Perlop

PNI::Node::Perlvar

AUTHOR

G. Casati , <fibo@cpan.org>

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2010 by G. Casati

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself .