[boost] Some questions on the FSM submission

From: Chris Russell (cdr_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-06-03 19:42:22

I read through the documentation but haven't tried coding against the
library yet. It looks quite useful for building isolated FSM mechanisms. I
observe in my own work that I typically have many FSM that interact with
each other. It could be argued that this is really just one large FSM, but I
like to think of them in terms of discrete FSM that interact with each other
because it makes it easier to conceptualize class structure, threading, and
occasionally inter-process or in the case of a distributed application,
inter-system partitioning.

That being said, I have the following questions (note these are not
criticisms of the library or even a formal review - I'm trying to understand
how it fits into my own work to decide how much time to invest in it).

If I understand the documentation correctly, the submission is geared more
towards creating hermetically sealed FSM mechanisms than for describing
multiple interacting FSM's. Is this correct?

Also, I have some need to deal formally with Petri Networks. Related to FSM
and automata theory in general, has any thought been given to supporting
this class of FSA?

I'm not a big UML fan so this aspect of the submission troubles me a little.
Do we have a lot of UML fans here? I would be happier if it imported AT&T
GraphViz DOT or some other format that explicitly deals with the directed
graph nature of FSM. But that's probably going to be an unpopular idea
because it begs the question why not use the BGL then?

- Chris