[texhax] Usepackages for FSMs

[Uwe Lueck]

"Paul Stanley" , 18.10.2010 03:34:03:
> I thought I'd check with you chaps before asking for help from the XY forum.
> anyone know a `user-friendly' package for modelling finite state machines?
> I'm dealing with `finite automata' in particular.
> The XY package can be used for drawing the arrows and the states. I'm 
> looking for something a little less terse and cryptic. :)

Hi Paul, 

when Juergen Fenn's topic index of the TeX Catalogue

    http://mirror.ctan.org/help/Catalogue/bytopic.html

doesn't help (hi Juergen!), you can try

    http://ctan.tug.org/search.html

and enter something for "Search the package descriptions".

I entered "automata". The results are 

    http://ctan.org/pkg/automata

    http://ctan.org/pkg/finomaton

    http://ctan.org/pkg/gastex

    http://ctan.org/pkg/vaucanson-g

Entering "finite" in place of "automata" doesn't add ...

You may be unhappy with MetaPost or PSTricks. 

But, hey, entering "Turing" instead, you get

    http://ctan.org/pkg/jflap2tikz

somewhat in Axel's direction --

"Axel E. Retif" <axel.retif at mac.com>, 18.10.2010 07:51:49:
>I think TikZ does a good job for that. Section 23 of the pgfmanual deals with Automata Drawing Library.

-- for a special situation, however. 

All the best, 

    Uwe.