Since the FSM (>= 1.3) now uses external schema files, it seems only logical to generate these from a visual editor instead of hand-typing them. And with OOo being the de facto standard for office work, OOo Draw seems a logical choice. In addition, while I'd gladly have used Dia or Inkscape as a drawing tools, both are significantly less easy to use for this type of diagramming (IMHO).

Now, how can one go about it ? Simply enough, with OpenDocument being an open standard, its layour is rather obvious. A FSM diagram source only needs two elements (rect: rectangles, and connector: transitions), so we can ignore all other elements.

• The rect elements are used for the states. We only use their ID and the content of their 'text:p' child as the state name
• The connector element has several attributes and a child element, but only a few are useful for this application
  • draw:start-shape defines the ID of the transition entry state
  • draw:end-shape defines the ID of the transition exit state
  • the child ''text:p' element defines UML description of the transition, the content of which we can parse as an UML description
    • name
    • event guard (ignored in version 1.3)
    • output conditions
    • action

This following excerpt represents the useful part of a two-state transition diagram:

   [..snip..]
    <draw:page draw:name="page1" draw:style-name="dp1" draw:master-page-name="Standard">
      <office:forms form:automatic-focus="false" form:apply-design-mode="false"/>
      <draw:rect draw:style-name="gr1" draw:text-style-name="P1" draw:id="id1" 
        draw:layer="layout" 
	svg:width="4.5cm" svg:height="3.5cm" svg:x="2.5cm" svg:y="3.5cm">
        <text:p/>
	</draw:rect>
      <draw:connector draw:style-name="gr2" draw:text-style-name="P1" 
        draw:layer="layout" draw:type="curve" 
	svg:x1="4.75cm" svg:y1="7cm" svg:x2="11.75cm" svg:y2="15.5cm" 
	draw:start-shape="id1" draw:start-glue-point="2" 
	draw:end-shape="id2" draw:end-glue-point="0">
        <text:p text:style-name="P2">Square 1 to 2</text:p>
	</draw:connector>
      <draw:rect draw:style-name="gr1" draw:text-style-name="P1" draw:id="id2" 
        draw:layer="layout" 
	svg:width="6.5cm" svg:height="4.5cm" svg:x="8.5cm" svg:y="15.5cm">
        <text:p/>
	</draw:rect>
      </draw:page>
  [..snip..]