Ubuntu Manpage: Msc-generator - draws signalling charts from textual descriptions

NAME

       Msc-generator - draws signalling charts from textual descriptions

SYNOPSIS

       msc-gen [OPTIONS] [infile]

DESCRIPTION

Msc-generator draws signalling charts from textual descriptions.

Program information:
-h, --help
Display this help and exit.

-l Display program licence and exit.

--version
Display version information and exit.

Operation mode selection:
--gui Using this mode pops up a GUI for interactive editing of a chart. Some options
apply in GUI mode, such as -S to start an empty chart of a given type; 'infile' to
open a file; --no-designs, -D to control design libraries; -F and -L to control the
default font.

--tei-mode
Using this option puts msc-generator into text editor integration mode. In this
mode msc-gen can produce color syntax highlighting, quick error, text indent and
hinting/autocomplete information. Input file(s) are read from standard input,
output is written to standard output, thus no input or output filename can be
specified and options -i and -o are invalid. Same with option -T option, but -S is
mandatory. Option --tei-mode implies -Pno, as well. See the documentation for
details.

--list-embedded

Lists the charts embedded in a PPT file.

Input control:
<infile>
The file from which to read input. If specified as '-', input will be read from
stdin (and '-S' must be used). The filename extension determines what type of chart
the input file contains. You can also specify a PNG image, in which case
Msc-generator searches for the chart text embedded in an iTXT chunk. You can also
specify a PPT file optionally followed by a slide number, like: 'my.pptx:2'. In
this case the chart text is looked for in the PPT file on the given slide (2). You
can omit the slide if the file contains only one embedded chart. If the slide
contains multiple embedded charts, you can append a number (in increasing Z-order
of the chart) to select one. (You can embed charts with Msc-generator using, e.g.,
'-T embed:1' or update embedded charts by using them both as input and output:
'msc-gen my.pptx:2:1 -T embed:2:1 -o my.pptx'

-i <infile> To retain compatibility with mscgen, this is an alternate way to

specify the input file.

-S <lang>
Forces Msc-generator to interpret the input file as a specific type of chart. This
overrides the guess from the filename extension. Current chart types are
'signalling' for Signalling Charts and 'graph' for Graphviz graphs and 'block' for
Block Diagrams.

--utf8 Forces the input file to be interpreted as UTF-8, even if it does not look like it.

--utf16
Forces the input file to be interpreted as UTF-16, even if it looks like UTF-8 or
ASCII.

--opt=<chart_option>=<value>

These options will be evaluated before the input file. Any value here will be
overwritten by a conflicting option in the file.

--design=<chart_design>

Any chart design can be specified here, taking precedence over the design specified
in the input file.

Output control:
-a[h] Automatic pagination. Used only with full-page output. If specified, scale cannot
be 'auto'. Specifying -ah will insert a heading after automatically inserted page
breaks.

-D <design_file>

Load file containing additional chart design definitions. You can have multiple of
this option to load several design files, after the default ones. These files are
loaded even if --no-designs is specified.

-e If output type is PNG, specifying this will embed the chart text into the PNG file
as an iTXt chunk. In case of multiple pages (and multiple output files) all will
have it embedded. Results in a warning if the output type is not PNG.

-F <font>
Use specified font. This must be a font name available in the local system, and
overrides the MSCGEN_FONT environment variable if that is also set. (On Linux\Unix
try fontconfig.)

-L <lang>
Use the specified language to select fonts. It must be an RFC 3066 style language
specifier, and will override any value in the MSCGEN_FONT_LANG environment
variable. Use either 2 letter lang codes, such as 'ja' for Japanese, 'zh' for
Chinese, etc. Ignored on Windows, as font names are language specific there.

-m{lrud}=<margin>

Useful only for full-page output, specifies the margin. A separate option is
needed to specify the left, right, upwards and downwards margins, denoted by the
second letter of the option. Margins are to be specified in inches (number only)
or in centimeters, if appended with 'cm' (no spaces). The default margin is half
inches everywhere.

--no-designs

If you specify this no design files will be loaded (except the ones you specify
with -D). This is useful to increase performance when you do not use them anyway.

--nopaths
Only the filename will be printed in error messages without its path.

-o <file>
Write output to the named file. If omitted, the input filename will be appended by
an extension suitable for the output format. If neither input nor output file is
given, msc-gen_out.* will be used. Specifying '-' will result in the out be written
to standard output.

-p[=<page size]

Full-page output. (PDF or PPT only, automatically implied for PPT) In this case the
chart is drawn on fixed-size pages (following pagination) with one pixel equalling
to 1/72 inches for PDF and 1/96 inches for PPT. If a chart page is larger than a
physcal page it is simply cropped with a warning. Setting the scale with the -s
option enables zooming. Page size can be set to ISO sizes from A0 to A6, and to US
sizes, such as letter, legal, ledger and tabloid. Append a 'p' or an 'l' for
portrait and landscape, respectively (except for 'tabloid' and 'ledger', which are
by definition portrait and landscape, resp.). E.g., use 'A4p', 'A2l' or 'letter_l'.
Default is 'A4p' for PDF and 'widescreen_l' for PPT, but you can also use
'on_screen_4_3_l' or 'on_screen_16_9' as well.

--no-pedantic

--pedantic
Set or unset the pedantic chart option (defaults to what is set in the design lib
or false if not defined).

-Pno No progress indicator displayed.

-q No progress indicator displayed, plus any final 'Success.' is also suppressed. On
success with no warnings msc-gen prints nothing.

-s=<scale>
Can be used to scale chart size up or down. Default is 1.0. Cannot be used
together with any of the -x or -y options. Only for bitmap or full-page output
(-p). For full-page output, you can set <scale> to 'width' which results in the
chart width being set to the page width, or to 'auto', which scales such that all
pages fit. For full-page output, you can specify multiple -s options, which makes
msc-gen to try them in the order specified until one is found for which no pages
need to be cropped. If none is such, the last one will be used and a warning will
be given.

-T <type>
Specifies the output file type, which may be 'png', 'eps', 'pdf', 'svg', 'ppt' or
'emf' (if supported on your system). Default is 'png'. The token 'ismap' produces
an NCSA formatted ismap file. The token 'lmap' is accepted and results in a text
file listing (the first line of) all labels and their page number and coordinates.
'src' will simply save the chart text; useful if you want to extract the source of
charts embedded in PNG and PPT input files. You can also use 'embed' with a PPT
output file to append a page with a PNG of the chart that includes the chart text
(and can be later edited by Msc-generator). 'embed:<page>' will add the PNG to an
existing page, while 'embed:<page>:<chart>' will update an existing chart (<chart>
is the number of the chart on that page in Z-order starting from 1).

--TI Additional Technical Info is printed about compilation.

-va=<center|up|down>

-ha=<center|left|right>

Set the vertical and horizontal alignment within a page for fullpage output.

-Wno No warnings displayed.

-x=<width>
Specifies chart width (in pixels). Only for bitmap output.

-y=<height> Specifies chart height (in pixels). If only one of -x or -y

is specified, the aspect ratio is kept. Only for bitmap output.

Signalling chart specific options:
--force-mscgen

Forces the chart to be interpreted in mscgen mode. Note that many Msc-generator
attributes, commands and keywords are still recognized. This setting makes
conflicting syntax be intrepreted as mscgen would do. Without this switch
Msc-generator uses the mscgen mode only if the chart starts with the text 'msc {'.

--prevent-mscgen

Prevents the chart to be interpreted in mscgen mode. Note that some mscgen
attributes and symbols are still recognized. This setting makes conflicting syntax
be intrepreted as Msc-generator would do. Without this switch Msc-generator uses
the mscgen mode if the chart starts with the text 'msc {'.

-Wno-mscgen Disables warnings for deprecated constructs kept only for

backwards compatibility with mscgen. Has no effect with --force-mscgen, in that
case no such warnings are emitted anyway.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 2008-2022 Zoltan Turanyi Msc-generator comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
       This  is  free  software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions;
       type `msc-gen -l' for details.

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

COPYRIGHT

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