On the Specification of Textual Syntaxes for Models

Model-driven engineering is based on the use of models at all stages of the development. In many situations, these models have to be represented so as to be handled by a human being or a specific tool (e.g. a compiler). However, the default representation of models (XMI) is generally not adapted. There is consequently a need for tools enabling the specification of concrete syntaxes for models. The Eclipse Modeling project currently offers GMF (Graphical Modeling Framework) for the definition of visual syntaxes. This paper presents TCS (Textual Concrete Syntax) for the definition of textual syntaxes as a candidate for TMF (Textual Modeling Framework).