Neil Graham <neil@cs.toronto.edu> writes: > Hi Boris. Strictly speaking, this is off-topic, so we should probably > take this off-list at some point... I'm blind and I intend to use Linux to do something... I hope it's not too OT ; and the problem is covered nowhere -- if it is, please let me know... > On Fri, 25 Oct 2002, Boris Daix wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> I was wondering if some of us have already worked on UML models : > > As a matter of fact, I just finished a week-long course in UML and design > patterns. Admittedly, it used Rational Rose, which is a heinously > inaccessible tool; It's the product I'm supposed to use too, here at INSA (www.if.insa-lyon.fr) > but even setting aside that, UML is basically an > intensely graphical--pictorial might perhaps be a better term--means of > representing objects and their relationships. i.e., I didn't get much > out of the UML component of my course, and it's not clear to me > how useful UML itself can be to folks who are blind. It's a standard in software engineering (I didn't talk about Merise, that's a french method, graphical too), and I'll soon be asked to give UML as I'll be supposed to read it : sure, I won't work directly with this method, but there should be a way to match these needs, via Linux especially. >> it seams that using XML to do this is a good way, but I'd like to get >> some experience feedback if any. > > Judging from http://www.omg.org, there is a standard that describes > "metamodels" in an abstract way; UML is a special case of > a metamodel. This is MOF, or the metaObject Facility. To facilitate a > vendor-neutral means of representing MOF, OMG has developed XMI--XML > Metadata Interchange. So it should be possible, if you took an XMI > representation of a UML model, to do something really intelligent with it > in order to make it usable by us. Yes, and that's what I'm looking for :-) It seams possible, that's why I'm investigating it, I feel the solution is not so far... I can say that, for sure, the software you mentionned can export UML works in XML-like formats, that's already a not-so-bad thing. > But I said possible, not obviously tractable. :) >> But I can say that I intend to use emacs + psgml + tdtd to work with >> this stuff, as these tools look very appropriate. > > Remember that XML is not an SGML language, so you probably don't want to > use an SGML parser for it. Well, psgml is an emacs-mode, not a parser. But anyway, I've read that SGML parser can read XML, as HTML : the Python modules for SGML are often used to parse HTML, as it's a "tag-fashion" language too. What can do the biggest is supposed to do the simplest... I'm not talking about processors/generators yet, just editing utilities accessible to us. > There are loads of XML parsers that will run > on Linux and that can be called from all manner of languages; let me know > if you want references (I get paid to work on the Apache Xerces-Java > project, so I have to know a bit about this. :)) I don't know this project but all info is welcome, in private this time, maybe ;-) > I've only started delving into this; would love to hear from the many more > experienced developers on this list with other perspectives. (That is, if > Hans doesn't shut this down first. :) ) He he... I believe that if I say to my teatchers "Hey, look, with GNU/Linux, I'm able to work with UML (via XML)", I'm sure Open Software would be clapped for hours ! :-) Thank you for reply Bye -- Boris Daix "Feel free to be Free, or not to be..." _______________________________________________ Blinux-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list