From adrian.lawrence@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk Sun Oct 31 15:49:11 2004
From: A E Lawrence <adrian.lawrence@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>
To: marcel.boosten@philips.com
Cc: java-threads@ukc.ac.uk, occam-com@ukc.ac.uk
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 23:22:31 +0100
Subject: Re: events in OO
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marcel.boosten@philips.com wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> My anti-UML campaign continues...
> Of course, UML also has got positive sides...
> It is not all negative...
> 
> Jim and Me in discussion.
> NEWMarcel is new text.
> 
> Marcel:
>    There is no need to have a formal semantics for
>    pictures.
> Jim:
>    If a diagram means one thing to you, and another to
>    me, we have a problem.
> NEWMarcel:
>    This is indeed the fundamental problem with pictures.  They need
>    explanation.  They need context.  It is an illusion to think
>    that "formal semantics" for the symbols in the figure solves
>    this fundamental problem.
> 
> Marcel:
>    Get real: use a drawing tool instead.
> Jim:
>    Which could itself prove rather distracting, of course.
> NEWMarcel:
>    Pen and paper never distracted me from writing... :-)

Jim is away on holiday, so he won't be able to answer this immediately.

But I just mention that the temporal logic and state chart people have
been using diagrams with formal properties (do I mean specifictions?)
for yonks. It seems to work for them. I don't know much about this, but
there are lurkers here who do :-)

As I understand it, most model checking apart from FDR uses this sort of
approach.

Adrian
-- 
Dr A E Lawrence