KIELER: The Kiel Integrated Environment for Layout (Eclipse Rich Client)

The Kiel Integrated Environment for Layout Eclipse Rich Client, or short KIELER, is a research platform for exploring the pragmatics of graphical modeling: improving the productivity of developers by eliminating tasks that don't contribute anything to the result.KIELER is based on the Eclipse framework and project about enhancing the graphical model-based design of complex systems. The basic idea is to consistently employ automatic layout in all graphical components of the diagrams within the modeling environment. This opens up new possibilities for diagram editing, browsing, and dynamic visualizations (e.g. for simulation runs). Hence the focus of this project is the pragmaticsof model-based system design, which can improve comprehensibility of diagrams, improve development and maintenance time, and improve the analysis of dynamic behavior.

This project is a continuation of the old KIEL project. The main differences are that KIELER aims to integrate a variety of modeling languages (not just Statecharts), and that it integrates into the rich client platform Eclipse. It attempts a tight integration with the modeling projects of Eclipse (EMF, GMF, Xtext, etc.) to bring new modeling approaches to a broad set of modeling paradigms and user communities.

KIELER is is developed as open source software, licensed under the Eclipse Public License and can thus be downloaded and used free of charge.

Being a research project, there are different people working in different areas of the project. There are four basic areas the project can be divided into:

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