The TASM Language Reference Manual Version 1.1 - Synrc

epresentation. For example, the XML can be easily converted to HTML documentation
with an appropriate XSL stylesheet. Furthermore, the UPPAAL model checker
uses an XML format as its storage format; it might be possible to convert a TASM
system into a UPPAAL model using XSL transformation. Having an XML format can
enable interoperability with outside tools through XSL transformation. The plain-text
syntax presented in section 3.2 could be used as an interoperability format because its
format is published; however, XML is now recognized as the standard for information
exchange between anonymous entities. This section describes the format of the XML
that is used for exporting a specification written in the TASM language. The resulting
file is a complete TASM specification.
The parent-child-attribute relationships of the XML syntax are described graphically
using XML syntax trees. The nodes of the tree can be of three types – element
nodes, attribute nodes, and text nodes. The graphical representation of each type of
node is depicted in Figure 3.1. One-to-many relation from parent to child nodes are
illustrated using the * character along the tree edge to denote ”zero or more”, and the +
character along the tree edge is used to denote ”one or more”. The complete XML syntax
is described successively, starting with the top-level tree nodes and expanding each
top-level node subsequently. The meaning of each node and associated tag is listed
in a table corresponding to each syntax tree. The mapping between the XML syntax,
the plain-text syntax and the logical objects and concepts (from chapter 2 should be
straightforward unless otherwise noted.
Element
Attribute
Text
Figure 3.1: Tree Nodes for XML Syntax Tree
The top-level of the XML syntax contains four main sections corresponding to the
four main logical objects listed in section 2.7. The syntax tree corresponding to the
top-level node is depicted in figure 3.2. The list of XML tags and attributes is listed in
Table reftablexmltags. The tasm node is the top-level node of the document and contains
the version of the TASM syntax that is used. The syntax will most likely evolve as
the language matures so the version number will be used to ensure backward compatibility.
The sys node represents the ”TASM system”, that is, the list of configurations
that can be used for simulation. The env node represents the ”TASM environment”,
that is, the list of global variables and the list of user-defined types. The tmpls node
represents the list of ”TASM templates”, that is, the list of machine definitions (main
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