From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (int-mx1.corp.redhat.com [172.16.52.254]) by listman.redhat.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C88F83EE41 for ; Fri, 25 Oct 2002 23:23:07 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from mail@localhost) by int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) id g9Q3N7k18268 for blinux-list@listman.redhat.com; Fri, 25 Oct 2002 23:23:07 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com (mx1.redhat.com [172.16.48.31]) by int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id g9Q3N7f18264 for ; Fri, 25 Oct 2002 23:23:07 -0400 Received: from yonge.cs.toronto.edu (root@yonge.cs.toronto.edu [128.100.1.8]) by mx1.redhat.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id g9Q31Tw08550 for ; Fri, 25 Oct 2002 23:01:30 -0400 Received: from keynes.cs.toronto.edu ([128.100.26.163]) by yonge.cs.toronto.edu with SMTP id <15277-26280>; Fri, 25 Oct 2002 23:23:01 -0400 Received: from neil (helo=localhost) by keynes.cs.toronto.edu with local-esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 185HXl-0000Bp-00 for ; Fri, 25 Oct 2002 23:23:21 -0400 Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 23:23:21 -0400 From: Neil Graham To: blinux-list@redhat.com Subject: Re: UML via XML ? In-Reply-To: <87of9i663c.fsf@pulsar.resi.insa-lyon.fr> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=X-UNKNOWN Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from QUOTED-PRINTABLE to 8bit by int-mx1.corp.redhat.com id g9Q3N7f18264 X-Loop: blinux-list@redhat.com Sender: blinux-list-admin@redhat.com Errors-To: blinux-list-admin@redhat.com X-BeenThere: blinux-list@redhat.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.1 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: blinux-list@redhat.com List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Linux for blind general discussion List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Hi Boris. Strictly speaking, this is off-topic, so we should probably take this off-list at some point... 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; 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 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. 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. 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'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. :) ) Cheers, Neil