Related work

To see why Cosmogol was developed, instead of using one of these tools, see also the rationale.

Presentation oriented

They are typically more general than Cosmogol, they allow you to describe generic graphs, such as computer networks, state machines, electrical circuits, etc.

• Graphviz, the well-known graph description language,
• The Perl module Graph::Easy is a similar system.

Code-generation oriented

Their main purpose is to facilitate the writing of a program which implements a state machine.

• SMC, the State Machine Compiler, allows state machines written in its language to be translated in many different programming languages,
• Ragel is based on the same principles.

Modelling tools

They are high-level tools, intended to model much more than a state machine.

• W3C State Chart XML, originally oriented towards speech-processing but which now claims to be "a general process control language in other contexts not involving speech processing",
• An older proposal to the W3C was XTND, which includes a very good explanation of the whole issue and why we need a formal language for state machines,
• UML is a general-purpose modelling language, which can be used for state machines,
• SDL is an ITU (officially named Z.100) standard for specifying complex systems.

Specification tools

• Lotos (Language Of Temporal Ordering Specification), ISO standard 8807
• Estelle

Cosmogol is a language to describe finite state machines. It is currently under study at the IETF. Web site maintained by Stéphane Bortzmeyer. © S. Bortzmeyer. Hosted by AFNIC.