1. Reference Material:
- Draft ANSI/ISO standard for C++.
- Java Tutorial
- Java API (library) 1.7 reference
- C++ STL reference material from SiliconGraphics
2. Downloads:
2.1 Chart Drawing:
Please note that, no matter which of these you use, you should never turn in a chart as a separate file in the proprietary format laoded and saved by these programs. Instead, you should be using your favorite word processor to create a document, within which these charts appear as figures. For more info, see Turning in Non-Programming Assignments.
dia is an excellent tool, it’s free, and it’s probably the easiest thing to use to get good-quality UML class relationship diagrams.
The CS Dept PCs should all have Microsoft’s Visio installed (as part of the Office suite). Although not as easy to use as the dia, this does have templates for UML diagrams.
The xfig family of tools provide a good, general-purpose drawing program, though the interface takes some getting used to. xfig predates MS Windows, so it’s interface was designed long before the Microsoft world of applictions began establishing certain conventions on GUI style.
xfig is available on our Unix network. Cygwin (see below) users install it on their PCs via the usual CygWin setup utility, if they are running an X server. A Java version, jfig, can be run on any platform with a Java engine (including the Java SDK below).
All of the above tools are good for UML class relationship diagrams, but can be very difficult to work with when doing UML sequence diagrams. For those, I recommend sdedit. This takes a very different approach by having you write a textual description of the elements in a chart and then producing the graphics from there. In essence, you are describing the sequence of calls in your diagram using a programming-language-like notation.
2.2 PDF generation
The following programs will allow you to generate PDF from any Windows program that allows printing. Generally, these create a special printer that writes to a file instead of to a physical output device. (Note that increasing numbers of Windows programs, including most word processors, support options for direct generation of PDF. Such built-in generation is usually preferable to the fake printer approach.
2.3 Postscript Viewing
- Ghostscript and related viewers (GUI-front-ends) for viewing and manipulating Postscript graphics.
