Table of Contents
Msc-generator comes with a bunch of Chart Designs and Entity Shapes (see Chart Designs and Entity Shapes). The designs available on a Windows machine can be viewed in the design selector combo box on the ribbon.
On Windows the file describing the default designs and shapes are installed besides the executable. On Linux these files are incorporated into the executable so that msc-gen can be a standalone file.
Specifically on Windows at startup Msc-generator looks for a file called
designlib.signalling in the directory where the executable is located. If
not found, the file original_designlib.signalling is searched (of which a
default one is placed there by the installer)[5].
If any found, the content is parsed as regular chart text before any chart.
You are free to create and modify your own design
files[6].
On Linux place these files to the ~/.msc-genrc/ folder or to your folder
of preference specified by the MSC_GEN_RC environment variable.
On Windows place these to the roaming appdata folder, which is under
Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Msc-generator on Windows 7.
Design and Defining Shapes shall have the .signalling extension.
Any such file in the above directories will be read by Msc-generator
in no specified order.
[5] This mechanism was provided
to enable the user to (re)define chart designs and is retained for backwards
compatibility only. (The idea was that original_designlib.signalling is
overwitten, when a newer version of Msc-generator is installed, whereas
designlib.signalling is not. The current recommended practice is to
add your own designs to new files in the roaming AppData folder, see below.
[6] However, please avoid any construct in design, which result in visual elements. Also try not to create files that result in warnings, errors.