Prototype of Platform Independent Editor Using Unified
Modeling Language
Challapalli Venkata Vijay Chaitanya
1
and Koduganti Venkata Rao
2
1
III/IV Computer Science and Information Technology
1,2
Gayatri Vidya Parishad College Of Engineering,
Accredited by National Board of Accreditation,
Affiliated to Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University,
Madhurawada, Visakhapatnam,
Andhra Pradesh, India. Pin – 530041
Abstract: This paper describes a prototy
pe of Editor. This prototype deals
with web-based technology and occupies diminutive amount of space, which
enables a team of users to work simultaneously on different systems with the
same Editor. This has the capability of running in the server and client system
independently. More over this Editor have achieved the goal of platform
independency and it has it’s own capabilities to run on different platforms.
Along with these features this also have the feature to send messages to the
server from the client.
To enable concurrent access and platform indep
endency the editor uses some of
the concepts of JVM, html, UML, and scripting languages. These features are
used to facilitate editing and operating. With the help of JVM the messages are
being sent to the server from the client.
1 Introduction
Operating systems play a major role in computing. Every operating system has its
own advantages and disadvantages. But it is not fair to restrict a computer intellectual
to a particular operating system, since the trend in the technology always varies from
time to time. With the improving technology one cannot survive by having
knowledge of only one operating system. But as the operating system changes it is
becoming more and more difficult for a particular individual to have an idea of all the
applications present in the operating system. Hence if the applications are made in
such a way that they are platform independent then one can easily handle those
applications and execute them to have their corresponding results. Here it decreases
the necessity to remembering the name of the same application in different operating
systems. Hence it is now required to have an application or software that can be run
on any platform. More over it would be more useful if the same application has the
features of forwarding the messages to the server from the client so that the server-
client relationship can also be achieved through the same application.
The prototype described in this paper packs all the above features and helps the
user to
operate on any platform with the same application. This application mainly
Venkata Vijay Chaitanya C. and Venkata Rao K. (2005).
Prototype of Platform Independent Editor Using Unified Modeling Language.
In Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Web Services and Model-Driven Enterprise Information Systems, pages 11-17
DOI: 10.5220/0002545400110017
Copyright
c
SciTePress
deals with the text and the graphics modes (formats) of operation and has the
capability of handling the text files and the graphic files.
Text files are handled in this editor using the concepts of html and scripting
languages and these can be stored in the client system.
Graphics files are typically handles in the system. These files are handled using
the concepts of JVM and html.
UML plays a major role in the design issue and every part of the system is
designed in the UML and the diagrams in the UML play a key role in the design issue
of the entire prototype.
2 Example Scenarios
2.1 Example 1
The editor in the DOS operating system is restricted only to that of the DOS and this can be
opened by the command “EDIT”. As this opens, one can type the corresponding file and can
store it. This editor has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. The main disadvantage of this
editor is that it cannot handle the image files. This command individually occupies a total
space of 80692 bytes.
2.2 Example 1
The editor in the WINDOWS operating system is “Notepad”. This also acts in the similar
fashion to that of the general dos editor have almost the same options. For image files one has
to open the “Paint” in windows and continue with his work. One cannot have the concurrent
access of Notepad and Paint from the same application and they as a whole occupies a disk
space of 73,728 bytes.
3 System Overview
As mentioned above the Editor described in this paper is completely web-based and
browser running Editor. This Editor is a composite of both text mode of input and
graphic mode of input. The Editor is likely to start at a page where the user is given a
choice to choose whether he wants to go for the text mode of input or the graphic
mode of input.
With in the project each user is given permissions to
Create a new file
Edit the files
Change the colors of the background
Add figures to the files.
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The original user deals with the file use case. Here he opens a new file and has
permissions to input the text or to draw the figures. The edit use case helps him to
edit the contents of the file and the colors use case helps him to add colors to the total
project and the help use case to provide necessary help to the user. The user can
directly interact with the graphics editor package, which provides all the above-
mentioned use cases and can draw the required figures or to input the required text for
him.
The general architecture or the class diagram of the above mentioned graphics
editor have the corresponding operations to handle the files and their objects. Here
the class diagram consists of the methods such as open, close, save, save as, exit for
the classes such as file, edit, etc., This diagram mainly deals with the major operations
of the file handling and achieves the total concept of the project.
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The major design issue lies in the sequence, which the total editor follows. Here
the total sequence is to be taken care of and have the capability of representing the
total diagram in the single sequence diagram. Our editor directly opens through any
platform and has the capability to ask the user about the operation he wants to use and
the mode in which he wants to enter the editor. Here he is given a chance to select the
options. Since the complete user interface is designed in html the user even without
having a minimum knowledge of the computer can also easily access the complete
system. Then he can select the respective option and can follow the mentioned
respective operations on the screen and can easily handle the complete software. The
sequence diagram is as shown in the figure and user can directly handle the respective
operations and can achieve the result.
The design issue also lies in the collaboration diagram where one can view the
total concept in the top-down approach and he can realize the total concept laid inside
it and the path through which the messages take the choice, which the user opts. Here
the objects of the same category lie in the same swim lane and this helps the user to
identify easily where the object belong to the which category and he can come to a
final understanding where he can directly interact with the system more easily and
conveniently and effectively. The more the user gets into the details of the system the
more he can adjust with it.
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4 Discussion
Although the development of the prototype presented here is still going on it would be
useful to review the benefits and the limitations of the Editor.
4.1 Benefits
This Editor has its unique benefits, which are not present in the other editors.
This is completely a web-based editor and hence all the benefits that are provided
in the browser can be directly used in the editor with out any limitations.
This provides a chance to use the editor and the Internet at one instance of time
since this is completely a browser-based editor.
This has the capability of forwarding the messages (graphical) to the server
directly (only when the net is connected) through this editor and hence message
passing becomes so easy.
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Since the Editor is completely designed using the html and JVM, bagged up all the
features of both of these, this have the capability of running in any operating system
with out the intervention of the operating system.
The major benefit in this is that the operating system (i.e., on which it is running)
only provides maximum options to it and hence the designer of the system does not
have to spend more time in providing all the options to it.
This provides the most user friendly nature and this can be operated by any user
who do not have that much knowledge about the computer as well as the operating
system especially.
4.2 Limitations
Because of the editor is designed completely in the browser there are certain
limitations to it.
We have first designed a prototype so that the original project time decreases and
the prototype can increase the understandability of the user.
Since our Editor is a web based editor we cannot have the page numbers and other
additional features with cannot be available in the browser.
Present system saves the text files only in the .txt extension.
It is limited only to create graphics files and is not capable of modifying the
already created files, which are present in the system.
Since we have used the concept of applets in JVM, it is not capable of saving the
file in the local machine.
This system does not support any paragraph counting, word counting and spell
checking functions.
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This is the complete overview of the system and this system has it own benefits
and the limitations and more over there is so much to enhance in this system. The
future enhancements are discusses below.
5 Conclusions and Future Works
Having implemented this prototype of a Editor which deals with the text and the
graphics formats we are confident that this achieves some of the major goals of the
present trend such as platform independency, less space utilization on the disk, more
reliability, more user friendly and combined features of several applications. We can
also have a look to the future works.
It is planned to implement the complete features of the WORD such as formatting,
macros, tables, etc., in the Editor, which helps the user to edit his text completely.
An import function helps in importing the graphics file and helps in manipulating
the contents of the graphics file. This can help the user more and the usage of the
system improves.
Last but not the least: It is important to integrate these systems into the daily
teaching and research practices to gain more experience and more impulses for the
further developments. It should become a general practice to use these systems in the
daily life to improve more and more.
References
1. The Unified Language User Guide by Grady Booch, James Rumbaugh and Ivar Jacobson
2. Real Time UML by Bruce Powel Duglass
3. Analysis Patterns by Martin Fowler
4. Surviving Object-Oriented Projects
5. Object Solutions by Grady Booch
6. UML Distilled by Martin Fowler
7. Software Reuse by Ivar Jacobson
8. The Unified Software Development Process by Ivar Jacobson
9. Visual Modeling with Rational Rose and UML by Addison-Wesley Object Technology
Series
10. Software Project Management by Walker Royce
11. The Unified Model Reference Manual by James Rumbaugh
12. Applying Use Cases by Geri Schneider
13. The Object Constraint Language by Jos Warmer
14. Enterprise Computing with Objects by Yen-Ping Shan
15. http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net
16. http://www,onesmartclick.com
17. http://www.tigris.org
18. http://hotscripts.com
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