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Introduction
Meander is a tool for creating sequence flows. More specifically, it is for rendering sequence flows in an presentable format using a presentation tool such as MS PowerPoint(r) or OpenOffice/LibreOffice Impress.
A sequence flows is an extremely useful device for capturing the interactions between actors or nodes in a network. Network designers use them to capture how a network currently works, as well as to capture how a network might be evolved going forward.
However, useful as they may be, sequence flows can be a pain to keep up to date in the middle of a network redesign or feature addition.
(Imagine editing a 10 page sequence flow after a design meeting during which it was decided that the second message on the first page really should have another parameter added to it. This one line change could have a ripple effect across all 10 pages. Now imagine trying to maintain a set of 20 or 30 such flows during the design phase - or having a customer tell you, "These flows are great; I'd like the color of the message texts to be red and could you bump up the font size.")
Meander is intended to ease the pain of updating flows. It won't make it go away completely, but updates that might take a week to do can now be done in an hour or two.
Having said this, Meander is not intended to be a CAD tool. It does not have the protocol error checking and consistency check features, nor is that planned. There are plenty of other tools out there for that. The aim of Meander to allow the network designers to capture their thoughts/desires for network evolution in a more 'freehand' and maintainable way.