Having a more formal description of state machines is a natural next
step from having, say, a good syntax description in ABNF.
Unfortunately, unlike ABNF, none of these (except SDL) have a long-
term stable reference. If we worry about PDF not being around for
future RFC readers, I am a bit more worried about the authors of a
SourceForge volunteer project finding other things to do.
Thus, I think the first step would have to be to define a (subset) of
a suitable language as an IETF-stable document, presumably after a
few people try out various basic designs.
On Jun 28, 2006, at 6:55 AM, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
* State Machine Compiler, SMC (http://smc.sourceforge.net/). As its
name suggests, its main aim is to generate executable code from the
state machine description. But it can be used, it seems so, for pure
specification. A nice exemple is a telephone at
http://smc.sourceforge.net/TelephoneSrc.htm.
(The FAQ has an excellent entry "Why write state machines in text and
then compile them? Why not create a GUI to draw state machines?" which
is quite relevant here.)
* Ragel (http://www.cs.queensu.ca/home/thurston/ragel/). Quite close
from SMC.
* FSMLang (http://fsmlang.sourceforge.net/). Same concept again.
* eXtensible Abstract State Machines, xASM (http://www.xasm.org/). I
must confess that this one is less clear in my mind.
* SDL (http://www.sdl-forum.org/). It is further from our aim, I
mention it for completeness.
Therefore, as a conclusion, I would like people to notice that
specifying state machines may not always involve a picture.
Unfortunately, there is no clear winner among these applications and
some of them are not ideal for specification (Ragel is "sold" more as
a replacement for lex than as a specification tool.)
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