What is Macao

Macao is a generic graph drawing software that lets you create and manipulate graphs quickly and easily. It is an intuitive interface that enables to automates many of the time-consuming tasks involved in building graphs.

Macao customization facilities enable the quick implementation of a new graph editor dedicated to a new type of graphical representation.This enable prototyping of new formalism, which is usefull when defining them.

Macao can be considered as a standalone tool. However, it is a natural complement to FrameKit, a software platform dedicated to the prototyping and quick implementation of CASE environments.

Both FrameKit and Macao relie on three key notions:

• Formalisms define the rules a graphical representation has to respect (what nodes, what edges, how they look...);
• Models are expressed using a formalism (a model can be seen as an instanciation of a formalism).

New screencasts available as tutorials

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What do we do with Macao

Macao is used internally to implement numerous graph editors.

In particular, it is used as the user interface of CPN-AMI 3.4, a Petri Net based CASE environment for the modelling and evaluation of distributed systems.

Macao have been designed by Jean-Luc Mounier since 1987.