When I go back to school after Thanksgiving, I'll be taking a course in CS Theory covering topics such as deterministic and nondeterministic finite state machines, turing machines, pushdown automata and a few other things. However, I haven't found a good application that can produce a visual representation of them as well as testing how they work (pass/fail, etc). The best that I've found so far is jFlap, and I'm finding it rather awkward.
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1113answers:
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A:
It was JFlap that I used in college. I didn't find it that awkward to use, but it looks like it may have changed since then. Sorry I don't have a better answer for you than that.
Aaron Smith
2008-10-13 18:22:38
Well, jFlap (as awkward as I find it) might be the best thing out there and if I want an app, I'll have to just learn how to use it.
Thomas Owens
2008-10-13 18:23:29
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A:
A friend of mine used Latex to draw them. I always preferred pencil and paper.
Paul Nathan
2008-10-13 18:25:19
That looks cool, but it doesn't appear to support all the different types of automata clearly, and it costs money. I think some people might be interested in this, but it doesn't look like it's good for me.
Thomas Owens
2008-10-13 18:39:52
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A:
I'm in a class like this right now. I've found paper and pencil to be sufficient. I can't say for sure, but I don't think you'll be required to draw automata that are too complicated to understand on one sheet of paper.
Claudiu
2008-10-13 18:50:30
That's true, but I've got messy writing style, which makes it very difficult to write for turning in and testing. Although I manage on tests, relying on that for everything would be a pain. It is something that I am considering, however.
Thomas Owens
2008-10-13 18:56:36
Never underestimate the complexity of a real-world state diagram! We've got one here that _does_ need 8px font on an A3 sheet. (Though it should be modulized a bit...)
xtofl
2008-11-21 09:22:59
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I drew them in UML and submitted StarUML jpeg exports for a while.
Then I wrote a PHP script to convert them to DOT format and used Graphviz to get nice-looking machines.
aib
2008-10-13 19:02:37
I forgot about DOT and Graphviz. That's an option I should look into, but it doesn't allow for testing the machines - I would have to do that by hand.
Thomas Owens
2008-10-13 19:05:37
Yes. Since it was sufficient for me to test by hand, I never got around to modifying the script to test the machine as well. Graphviz does produce pretty-looking pictures, though :)
aib
2008-10-14 13:14:31