| Overview |
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The ePNK is a platform for Petri net tools based on the PNML transfer
format. Its main idea is to provide generic Petri net types, which
can be easily plugged into it, and to provide a simple generic GMF editor, which
can be used for graphically editing nets of any plugged in type.
Additional functionality can be plugged in. The ePNK is implemented
based on the eclipse platform, and runs on all hardware platforms
supporting eclipse (right now it is deployed for Eclipse Galileo and Helios).
The current version (June 17, 2011) of the ePNK is 0.9.2, which fully supports PNML and all the Petri net types defined in the International Standard ISO/IEC 15909-2. Though the current version is quite stable and supports many new and interesting features (see release notes), we do not call this version 1.0. The reason is that the graphical editor of the ePNK is still not fully exporting all graphical features of PNML (an incentive for me to implement some of these features would be that someone tells me about a concrete project or application where this would be really needed).
If you have any comments, suggestions, error reports, please send an email to Ekkart Kindler ().
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| Current version |
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New: As of June 17, version 0.9.2 of the ePNK is released,
which runs on eclipse Helios (a version for Galileo exists too, but is not yet deployed).
You will find more information on how to install the current version of the ePNK on your platform at the
Installation Details page – there, you will
also find an overview of the different versions and the functionality that was added for
the different versions.
If you prefer it the quick way, here is the ePNK update site for Eclipse Helios: http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/~eki/projects/ePNK/helios/update/ or look at the release notes of version 0.9.2.
New: As of August 5, the ePNK is also deployed as a stand-alone version for Windows that does not require Eclipse or Java to be installed on your computer. This is called the ePNK product. The version deployed right now is also version 0.9.2. See here for the download and installation information.
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| Using the ePNK |
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After successfully installing the ePNK, you can use the ePNK. The User's Guide Chapter
of the ePNK Manual
will provide you with all the necessary information.
Here is some brief information for the impatient: For a quick start, you can use some examples of PNML documents in the following zip file org.pnml.tools.epnk.example-documents.zip, which you can use for a start. After you have dowloaded the examples, install them in your eclipse workspace by, clicking "File"->"Import. In the dialog, select "General"->"Existing Projects into Workspace"; in the next dialog, click "Select archive file", press the "Browse" button and select the zip file that you downloaded before. Then, select the project in the "projects area" and finish the dialog.
You should see the Petri net examples now in the resource browser and be able to open them (by a double click). Note that the editor shows the Petri net in a tree structure. For seeing and editing nets (or actually pages) graphically, you need to fold up the tree and select a page. On a right click on a page, there will be a pop up menu: in this menu, select "ePNK" -> "Start GMF editor on page" (or just double-click on a page). Note that you still need to save the net in the tree broswer in the end (the save in the graphical editor is always disabled now).
Note that labels are created independently of any Petri net object first. Then the LinkLabel tool (or the context menus) can be used to attach the label to a Petri net object. Then, you will also be asked in a pop-up menu, which kind of label this should be (dependent on the options of the object and the labels it has already).
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| Developing with the ePNK |
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The most important feature of the ePNK is that you can extend it and plug-in your new Petri net types,
tool-specific extensions, or some analysis functionality. For doing this, you will probably
need to read the Developers Guide Chapter of the
ePNK Manual.
You will probably also need to look at the source code of the ePNK project. All the ePNK projects are deployed with their source code now. If you import these plugins to your workspace (open the plugin view, right-click on the respective plugin, select "Import As" -> "Source Project"), zou can have a look at the examples and tutorial as well as the implementation.
Note that some of the new features of the ePNK 0.9.2 are not yet covered in the manual. But, the example projects might help using these features anyway.
There is also a SVN repository in which the ePNK is developed, which is maintained at DTU. People, who would like to join the development team of the ePNK, could contact Ekkart Kindler. Once we reach the critical mass, the repository will probably be moved to some open source collaboration platform such as Source Forge.
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| References, more information, and resources |
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Ekkart Kindler (), November 19, 2010 (last updated August 5, 2011)