hi Anthony,

I love the idea, not only for PICs, but also for all kind off other
programm generating (PICs, Windows, Delphi, PHP, Java, ASP,
hardware-design, process-flow in organizations ,...).
When I think of FSM, a graphical user interface is a *must* in my opinion.

Without graphical user-interface / presentation FSM it's just another
tool for technician,
not any better then the current programming languages.

With a graphical user interface / presentation, FSM becomes a tool that
brings a technician and the end-user much closer to each other. A
graphical FSM can be understood and made by non-technicians !
(Oh oh, ... now no one in this newsgroup will favor for FSM anymore ;-)
Besides that, with a graphical FSM, documentation of a project is almost
done automatically.

There will always be some (small) parts which are not covered very well
by FSM,
so you still have to dig into the language/structure below. But that
yields for every higher abstraction level.
For PICs I use JAL, and I always write the complete functionality first
in JAL. Then when resource demand is too high (either time or spcae), I
convert small parts into streamlined assembler.

Making my own FSM is still on my wishlist (because I cann't find the
tool I would like to have),
so maybe I could be of some help.
What operating systems should the FSM work on ?
What kind of license are you thinking of ?
(What kind of tools do you have in mind for developping the FSM ?)

Stef Mientki

Anthony Toft wrote:

>A ways back there was some discussion on the use of finite state
>machines (FSM) in designing software for the PIC.
>
>I have been thinking about writing a compiler for the PIC basically
>since I started messing with them, but there are several out there or in
>the works...
>
>So I have decided to make an FSM compiler, you define the FSM in a
>structured language, and the resulting ASM makes the pic behave as
>described.
>
>Is there any need for this? If there is and you'd use it, what would you
>like to see in it? What language would you like to see it modeled on (C,
>Pascal)? How would you like it to look (file structure)? What features
>would you like to see?
>
>Anthony
>--
>Anthony Toft <toftat@cowshed.8m.com>
>
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