Graphical Design and Generation of Textual User Interfaces

Here are a couple of simple examples of informal english descriptions of the structure of a particular kind of text file, and the corresponding informal graphical descriptions.

There are stylistic differences between them, purely to illustrate different options. The first uses colour to emphasise the different components of the complete design. The second is monochrome, and the rules for "symbol string" and "state number" have not been substituted into the main rule (for "automaton").

Student course choices

The whole file consists of one or more students, with the information about each student on a separate line. For each student,
the first item on the line is a school (e.g. CIS),
the next is a tutorial group (e.g. W7),
the next is the student's name (e.g. Abramson,Paul B)
and finally there is list of modules that they are taking (e.g. CS3001 CS3071 CS3102 CS3132 CS3311 CS3322 CS3361 CS3900 EM2490):
The list of modules can be empty or contain any number of module names.
A school is some number of upper-case letters.
A group can be an upper-case letter followed by a digit, or two underline characters (e.g. if it is unknown because the student has not yet been put in a group).
A module name is two upper-case letters, followed by 3 or 4 digits.
A student's name starts with an upper-case letter, the second character is either lower-case or an apostrophe, and then any remaining characters are upper- and lower-case letters, commas, spaces, hyphens and apostrophes.
The different fields are separated by tab characters, and the individual module names within the module list field are separated by spaces.
e.g.:

CIS W7  Abramson,Paul B          CS3001 CS3071 CS3102 CS3132 CS3311 CS3322 CS3361 CS3900 EM2490
CE  X1  O'Rourke,Daniel M        CS3001 CS3041 CS3052 CS3071 CS3082 CS3111 CS3322 CS3900 EM2490
AI  Y6  Naismith,Gregory S       CS3001 CS3052 CS3071 CS3082 CS3311 CS3322 CS3361 CS3900 EM2490
CIS X4  Sanders,Alexander P      CS3001 CS3071 CS3102 CS3132 CS3311 CS3322 CS3361 CS3900 EM2490
SI  __  Varney,Samantha          CS3041 CS3052 CS3071 CS3082 CS3251 CS3311 CS3432 CS3900 EM2490
CS  W1  Smith,Mark               CS3001 CS3052 CS3071 CS3082 CS3212 CS3232 CS3241 CS3251 CS3900 EM2490
MI  I3  Cooper,Paul              CS3311 CS3561 CS3572 CS3902 MK3322 HM3111 HM3132 HM3142 HM3152 HM3121
MI  I4  Smythe,Helen Ruth        CS3561 CS3572 CS3902 MK3322 MK3311 DI3111 HM3132 HM3152 HM3121 HS3132
CE  Z5  Grant,Ellie              CS3052 CS3071 CS3082 CS3111 CS3311 CS3322 CS3361 CS3900 EM2490

Finite state automaton

The description of the automaton consists of one or more state declarations, followed by the definition of the start state, given by a '*' followed by a state-number. Each state declaration starts with the state-number, followed by a colon or a "@", followed by a list of one or more pairs of a symbol-string and a state-number, separated by commas and terminated by a semicolon.
A symbol-string is one or more characters between a pair of apostrophes ('). Any characters (except a newline, or another apostrophe) can appear between the apostrophes containing a symbol-string. Spaces, tabs and newlines can appear between any components of the input, but not inside a state-number. A space or tab (or both) can appear inside a symbol-string, in which case it is significant, but a newline cannot.
e.g.:

        7: ' ' 7, '+' 1, '-' 1,
                '0123456789' 2; 1: '0123456789' 2;
        2@ '0123456789' 2, '.'  3, 'E' 4;
        3@ '0123456789' 3, 'E' 4;
        4: '+-' 5, '0123456789' 6;
                5: '0123456789' 6;
                6@ '0123456789' 6;
        *7

symbol string is
'\''	(list of) one or more Any character (except a newline, or another apostrophe) (A space or tab (or both) can appear inside a symbol string, in which case it is significant, but a newline cannot.)	'\''

state number is
unsigned number

Spaces, tabs and newlines can appear between any components of the input, but not inside a state number.