This manual is for Msc-generator (version v4.4.0, 3 October 2014), a tool to draw message sequence charts from a textual description.
Please visit https://sourceforge.net/projects/msc-generator/ to download the latest version.
Msc-generator is a program that parses textual Message Sequence Chart descriptions and produces graphical output in a variety of file formats, or as a Windows OLE embedded object. Message Sequence Charts (MSCs) are a way of representing entities and message interactions between those entities over some time period. MSCs are often used in combination with SDL. MSCs are popular in telecom and data networks and standards to specify how protocols operate. MSCs need not be complicated to create or use. Msc-generator aims to provide a simple text language that is clear to create, edit and understand, and which can be transformed into images. Msc-generator is a potential alternative to mouse-based editing tools, such as Microsoft Visio.
This version of msc-generator is a heavily extended and completely rewritten version of the 0.08 version of Michael C McTernan’s mscgen. The original tool was more geared towards describing interprocess communication, this version is more geared towards networking. Msc-generator has a number of enhancements compared to mscgen, but the chart language is no longer backwards compatible now (as mscgen has also evolved over time). Still the command-line syntax of Msc-generator is compatible to that of mscgen, so any tool integrated with mscgen (such as Doxygen) can also be used with Msc-generator.
Msc-generator builds on lex, yacc and cairo. A Linux and Windows port is maintained. The Windows version is written using MFC.