Proceedings of the Third Symposium on Programming Languages and Software Tools : Kääriku, Estonia, August 23-24 1993

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A Graphical Tool for Specification of Reactive Systems

A prototype of a simulation tool with graphical visualization and animation facilities has been implemented for the DisCo specification language. This paper describes the basic ideas behind it, with emphasis on the visualization and animation facilities. The DisCo language is designed so that formal reasoning can be used to ensure critical properties of the specification. Simulation with animation is intended to complement the formal reasoning, not to replace it. Another purpose of graphical animation is to visualize specifications so that their authors and the "customers" can more easily discuss them. Because the user of the DisCo tool may lack the required knowledge and motivation to write "programs" for the animations, it must be possible to create the displays as easily and automatically as possible. The DisCo tool provides facilities for that. 1. Introduction Joint actions can be used to specify reactive 1 systems. A description of the joint action approach can be found in [1]..