Modelling state machines
Monday, 14. April 2008, 19:11:05
I was trying out some various ways of creating a simple state machine illustration in SVG this weekend. Basically I'm looking for a fairly highlevel description language that allows me to make changes easily while still providing automated layout and a good aestetic result that can be exported to SVG.
The following example (from Wikipedia) shows a simplified example of what I'd like to get as the end result.
It seemed like Graphviz was a sure fit to those criteria. This is what the above graph would look like if written in the DOT language that graphviz groks:
Now the end result isn't as nice as the first example, which was "hand-drawn" in Inkscape judging by the comments in the file. Which brings me to my question: is there a program that can process the DOT input to produce something more similar to the first picture?
The following example (from Wikipedia) shows a simplified example of what I'd like to get as the end result.
It seemed like Graphviz was a sure fit to those criteria. This is what the above graph would look like if written in the DOT language that graphviz groks:
digraph simple_state_machine {
node [shape = doublecircle]; S1;
node [shape = circle] S2;
node [shape = point] S0;
S0 -> S1;
S1 -> S2 [ label = "0" ];
S1 -> S1 [ label = "1" ];
S2 -> S1 [ label = "0" ];
S2 -> S2 [ label = "1" ];
} As you see this is fairly easy to write, and super easy to change. Exactly what I wanted in other words. Here's the output file:Now the end result isn't as nice as the first example, which was "hand-drawn" in Inkscape judging by the comments in the file. Which brings me to my question: is there a program that can process the DOT input to produce something more similar to the first picture?
