roussos@cs.arizona.edu (George E. Roussos) (02/06/90)
I am curious to hear of what kind of tools exist for the design of finite automata/state machines that use a graphical user interface to allow the designer to describe the automata by using a mouse and objects to represent the states and transitions into/out of them. If you have seen such a thing, I am curious as to: tool name which environment it runs under availability (source, cost) Thankyou, george Internet : roussos@cs.arizona.edu UUCP : uunet!arizona!roussos )
doner@henri.ucsb.edu (John Doner) (02/13/90)
In article <71@caslon.cs.arizona.edu> roussos@cs.arizona.edu (George E. Roussos) writes: > I am curious to hear of what kind of tools exist for the design >of finite automata/state machines that use a graphical user interface to >allow the designer to describe the automata by using a mouse and objects >to represent the states and transitions into/out of them. If you have Within the last two years, I saw a Macintosh program called 'Turing' that provided these facilities for designing Turing machines. I think I downloaded it from Compuserve. Not sure what I did with it, though. Does anyone else remember this one? If not, I'll try a little harder to locate it. John E. Doner | "The beginner...should not be discouraged if...he Mathematics, UCSB | finds that he does not have the prerequisites for Santa Barbara, CA 93106| reading the prerequisites." doner@henri.ucsb.edu | --Paul Halmos, Measure Theory
fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk) (02/13/90)
In article <71@caslon.cs.arizona.edu> roussos@cs.arizona.edu (George E. Roussos) writes: > I am curious to hear of what kind of tools exist for the design >of finite automata/state machines that use a graphical user interface to >allow the designer to describe the automata by using a mouse and objects >to represent the states and transitions into/out of them. If you have David Harel (harel@wisdom.weizmann.ac.il) and Amir Pnueli have an extremely nice system based on their notion of "state charts". State charts describe finite automata, but are often vastly more compact; they provide simple ways of describing cartesian product states, for example. I've seen some sample graphics, and they are very nice. A state-chart description of Harel's digital watch was much clearer than the corresponding state diagram, and made it obvious where the watch-maker had committed some ergonomic no-nos. As a simple limiting case, you can just diagram a DFA, Mealy machine, or Moore machine with it. But I'd bet you'll want to use the more advanced features. Mark Fulk
wme@dweazel.sw.mcc.com (Michael Evangelist) (02/14/90)
In article <1990Feb13.143415.12763@cs.rochester.edu>, fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk) writes: > David Harel (harel@wisdom.weizmann.ac.il) and Amir Pnueli have an extremely > nice system based on their notion of "state charts". > David does have a nice system for succinct representation of fsa. If you want to represent more general computational structures that use multiparty interactions for interprocess synchronization and communication, my group at MCC has a visual tool called VERDI that fits the bill nicely. (See the paper by me, Nissim Francez, and Shmuel Katz in the November, 1989, TSE for background on interactions.) I am hoping to get VERDI binaries released to universities. VERDI is a design tool for distributed systems, but it could easily be used for teaching the elements of concurrency to undergraduates and would be available at nominal charge. If you are interested, help me make the case by sending email to evangelist@mcc.com. Mike Evangelist