Nassi

Generation of Nassi-Shneiderman Diagrams under Unix


[ Introduction | Features | Tutorial | Downloads | Licensing] Documentation ]

Last Modified on 12 December, 2002


Keywords: software documentation, structure charts, structured programming, software engineering

Introduction

The nassi program developed at the Central Institute for Applied Mathematics (ZAM) at the Forschungszentrum Jülich is a tool to generate Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams under Unix/X11. nassi is designed primarily for the creation of documentation, but may as well be used for source code analysis/browsing.

C and PASCAL programs and pseudo code that follows the conventions of either of these languages can be transformed into a graphical representation of the program flow. For representation and postprocessing nassi provides a convenient interface with which single diagrams can be selected, drawn on the screen, exported in several output formats and printed.

A graphics editor allows layout changes of the whole diagram or of single statements or control structures. Statements and whole structures can be hidden or shifted as a block to a separate diagram. Such changes to the layout and structure of diagrams can be inserted into the source code via special comments and are then available for further treatment of the source code.

For output purposes, nassi also provides the option of generating source data of the Tgif and Xfig graphics editors in addition to screen output, Encapsulated PostScript graphics and printable PostScript files. This makes it possible to also change and extend diagrams far beyond the functionality of the built-in graphics editor. For the rapid generation of diagrams nassi provides a batch option which generates diagrams in the desired output format.

For details see the documentation or take a look at some screen shots in the tutorial.

Features

Tutorial

To get an impression of nassi's capabilities and its look and feel, take a look at this nassi tutorial, that describes what you can do with nassi and how you can do it.

Downloads

Current version: 1.3, (December, 2000) see Change Log

Licensing

nassi is distributed as Shareware. You can download a free demo version for evaluation. This demo version includes all features of the full version but will refuse to create output files for large diagrams.

A license for the full version enables you to download and use the unconstrained version of nassi on any of the supported platforms. Please see the License agreement for details. If you have a full license you will be informed via Email about new releases of nassi as soon as they are ready for downloading. You can download those updates - which may contain bug fixes or enhancements - using your license key.

The price for a full license is Euro 30 (or US $ 30). If you wish to purchase a site license, please contact the authors.

License Agreement

Documentation

The ZAM Technical Short Note FZJ-ZAM-TKI-0305 Generation of Nassi-Shneiderman Diagrams under Unix with nassi contains an extensive documentation of nassi. A text version of this TKI is part of the online-help included with nassi.

[ Introduction | Features | Tutorial | Downloads | Licensing] Documentation ]


KFA-Homepage  ZAM-Homepage  Keyword Search
Forschungszentrum Jülich, ZAM
Email: nassi.zam@fz-juelich.de
24-Sep-1999
URL: <http://www.kfa-juelich.de/zam/nassi/nassi.html>