Bug#528784: RFP: mscgen -- Message Sequence Chart generator
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
* Package name : mscgen
Version : 0.14
Upstream Author : Michael McTernan <Michael.McTernan.2001@cs.bris.ac.uk>
* URL : http://www.mcternan.me.uk/mscgen/
* License : GPL (program, render library), LGPL (parser library)
Programming Lang: C
Description : Message Sequence Chart generator
Mscgen is a small program that parses Message Sequence Chart descriptions
and produces PNG, SVG, EPS or server side image maps (ismaps) as the
output. Message Sequence Charts (MSCs) are a way of representing entities
and interactions over some time period and are often used in combination
with SDL. MSCs are popular in Telecoms to specify how protocols operate
although MSCs need not be complicated to create or use. Mscgen aims to
provide a simple text language that is clear to create, edit and
understand, which can also be transformed into common image formats for
display or printing.
This program and the language it parses have been inspired by Graphviz
Dot, which provides a really good way to document State Transition
Diagrams, data structures and directed graphs. Unlike Graphviz, this
program does no clever layout operations or spline routing as this is not
needed for MSCs, and so was much simpler to implement. Doxygen (version
1.5.2 onwards) also allows MSCs to be embedded directly in the same way
that dot diagrams can be added to documentation, making it easy to
improve Doxygen generated documentation through the use of message
sequence charts.
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