I think I have more chance here than in 'software'.

I'm looking for some (I would call it very limited) software to design state diagrams for software requirement specifications.

Required

• gui
• create states ands their relationships
• display states (preferably name) and their relationships (preferably short description like '<1>' when a user presses '1' on an input device)
• click on state or relationship and it will give a full description
• export to text file for use in requirement specification
• print (to A0 paper)
• run under windows 2000/XP

Options

• allow to insert a new state in in existing relationship
• eport to some standard format (if existing)
• export to a csv format
• run under linux
• preferably free
• preferably open source

Not required at all (but nice to have)
Create software framework in C

Hope you can advise. I did some research but did not find something that suited my needs. I will continue my search later.

Hi -

It sounds like a great idea for an Open Source project ;-) More specifically, it sounds like a great idea for an open source Eclipse plug-in.

As far as here-and-now...
.. I honestly think Visio is probably your best bet (although Visio clearly misses a significant number of your requirements - including the "runs on Linux" and "free/opens ource" parts ;-)).

Good luck - and please let us know what you find!

Hi paulsm4,

thanks for the reply

I did try it in visio but was not sure if it is the right tool for the job (and feel more confident now that it might be). There might be better solutions that I have not found yet.
I'm however not that familiar with it (I use it occasionally as a drawing tool and did some 'automation' on existing drawings a couple of years ago) that I know how to get data out in a usable format. The last time I tried to link it to an Access database, the results were not what I expected, but I will give it a try again.

I did try a few other things myself (both are text based):

• wrote a LAMP solution; nice for simulation by the user, but lacks the overview as it's text based
• created a state matrix (if it's called like that) in excel including a simple simulation; it again lacks the overview (not easy to follow) and it has a severe limitation in the number of columns per worksheet (I'm looking at 1000+ states)

Thanks again, WimS

You could try something like umbrello.

It doesn't fully meet your requirements (I doubt that it runs under windows and I'm not sure about the A0 output) but if something like that doesn't work for you, then you are probably stuck with trying to get a program like visio to do something it wasn't really designed for.

Hi -

Umbrello looks really great - I wasn't familiar with it. Thanx for the tip, salasi!

Here are some links that might suggest some ideas for Visio (which, when you get into at a level far deeper than I ever have ;-)) is much, much more than just a "drawing tool":

http://www.codeplex.com/StaMa
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20.../gill_01.shtml

'Hope that helps .. PSM

Salasi,

thanks, I have installed it on my Ubuntu box and started playing with it.

If you're familiar with it, can you tell me if it's possible to move the 'startpoint' or 'endpoint' of a transition to another state. I haven't found that functionality yet.