Is there a visual diagram format for gui event mapping?

Question

Hi,

Does anyone know of any kind of UML variation which can map events in a GUI system?

I have a quite complex event driven GUI system and I would like to create a diagram so new developers can easily get an overview of events fired by various views and what models/controllers or view are instantiated/effected by these events.

I was looking for something that would look more like a mind map which branches all over the place rather than linear scenarios.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Regards,

Chris

Answer 1

State diagrams.

Old and pricey, but here is a great text on modeling user interfaces with state charts. I've worn the pages out on mine....

Answer 2

For quick and dirty message sequence charts, you can't beat the price of mscgen. It uses a source text inspired by the syntax used by AT&T's Graphviz package, which is, incidentally, a good way to rendering arbitrary directed and undirected graphs.

I often use graphviz to document my state machines, as I find it easier to keep in sync with the implementation than a Visio drawing.

Answer 3

the book that finally helped me really understand UML statecharts is Samek's Practical Statecharts in C/C++ which has a few chapters on them as well as an impressive implementation framework for building state-based systems. I think it's worth getting just for the explanations of how to think with statecharts.

For actually creating quick statecharts or similar rough diagrams, I do a lot of work with the textual DOT language in GraphViz and often then include those diagrams directly into documentation generated with Doxygen.