An interactive system for recognizing hand drawn UML diagrams
Edward Lank, Jeb S. Thorley, Sean Jy-Shyang Chen · Conference of the Centre for Advanced Studies on Collaborative Research · 2000
Diagrams are widely used by software engineers to capture the structure and organization of software systems. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a commonly-used notation for such diagrams. We have designed and implemented a system for the on-line recognition of hand drawn UML diagrams. Input comes from an electronic whiteboard, a mouse, or a data tablet. A sophisticated segmentation algorithm groups pen strokes into symbols, coping with drawing inaccuracies that are common in hand drawn input. The system is organized around a retargetable kernel which provides a general front end for on-line recognition of any iconic notation. The kernel is extended with UML specific enhancements to segmentation, as well as UML specific glyph recognizers. A simple and intuitive graphical user interface allows the user to correct segmentation and recognition errors. Relatively messy freehand UML drawings are interpreted properly.