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For each of its languages Msc-generator comes with a bunch of Chart Designs (and Entity Shapes for signalling charts, 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.
The files describing the chart designs (and shapes) are of the same language that the language of the chart they provide designs for. These files shall have the primary extension of the chart type.
Note that you should define only designs and shapes in design libraries (for
languages that support them). Colors, styles and procedures shall be defined
as part of a design. If you want to define one color, style or procedure to be
available without applying a design, add them to the plain
design.
Any styles, colors or procedures defined in a design library outside a design
will probably be unavailable later - however, the behaviour is undefined and
Msc-generator may generate errors for this in the future. Similar, avoid commands
in the design library that actually generate chart elements.
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 for each supported chart type Msc-generator
looks for a file called designlib.xxx
in the directory where the
executable is located (xxx is the primary extension of the chart type). If
not found, the file original_designlib.xxx
is searched (of which a
default one is placed there by the installer)9.
If any found, the content is parsed as regular chart text before any user chart text.
You are free to create and modify your own design
files10.
Designs (and shapes) defined in these will be added to the list of available
designs in the GUI and can be referred to from files processed via the command
line. On Linux place your design files to the .msc-genrc/
folder,
that will be searched for under your HOME directory or
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 and 8.
Any file in the above directories with the primary extension of a supported
chart type will be read by Msc-generator in no specified order before processing
your chart. All other files are silently ignored.
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.xxx
is
overwitten, when a newer version of Msc-generator is installed, whereas
designlib.xxx
is not. The current recommended practice is to
add your own designs to new files in the roaming AppData folder, see below.
However, please avoid any construct in design, which result in visual elements. Also try not to create files that result in warnings, errors.
Next: External Editor, Previous: Multiple Chart Types, Up: Usage Reference [Contents]