The editor menu bar provides the following menus:
The Help menu is described in Help Menu.
The File menu supports the following commands on diagrams:
The File menu choices are described in File Menu, except Print which is described in The Print Dialogs in ORCA, SDT and the Organizer.
The Edit menu provides editing functions that you can perform on objects in a diagram, or on text in the text window. The Edit menu contains the following menu choices:
This command restores the content of the drawing area to its state prior to the most recently performed operation. Text editing operations cannot be undone.
| Editor | Operations you can undo |
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OM, SC, HMSC |
Cut, Copy and Paste and Clear |
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OM |
Editing a class ( Browse & Edit Class Dialog) |
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SC |
Expanding/collapsing symbols |
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HMSC |
Editing a symbol |
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MSC |
Cut, Copy and Paste and Clear |
These commands provide standardized clipboard functions for copying, cutting and pasting objects in the drawing area or text in the text window.
You can interrupt a Paste operation by pressing <Esc>.
The MSC specific rules regarding the Paste command are described in Pasting in MSC Diagrams.
Pastes the currently copied object (from the OM or Text Editor) as an OM symbol or MSC object in the drawing area. The object is transformed and a link is optionally created between the copied and pasted objects.
The Paste As dialog is opened. See The Paste As Command.
This command removes the selected objects from the drawing area, or the selected text from the text window.
Also see Deleting an Object.
Clearing an instance head symbol or its instance axis line in an MSC diagram will also remove all objects that were connected with the instance axis regardless of if they were selected or not.
If a text symbol or a comment symbol is selected, this command allows you to expand or collapse the symbol from or to its minimum size.
If an MSC diagram is selected, the Collapse command collapses the selected instance axes to give you an overview of the diagram. A complex MSC can in this way be viewed in several decomposed MSCs. Two diagrams are created; one where the instances you have selected are collapsed into a decomposed instance and one where the behavior of the the instances you have selected are shown. You can Navigate from a decomposed instance to the referenced diagram.
If an OM class, OM instance or SC state symbol is selected, this command selects whether all compartments should be displayed or not. A collapsed symbol will only display the name compartment (including the stereotype and properties texts for an OM symbol), which is particularly useful when referring to a symbol that is defined elsewhere.
This OM command brings up the modeless Line Details window, that is used to inspect and edit the properties of the currently selected OM line. If there is none or more than one selected OM object, the items in the Line Details window will be dimmed.
The Line Details window and its appearance for different type of OM lines is described in Line Details Window.
This OM command brings up the modeless Symbol Details window, that is used to inspect and edit the stereotype and properties texts of the currently selected OM class or object symbol.
The Symbol Details window and its appearance is described in Symbol Details Window.
This OM command brings up the modal Browse & Edit Class dialog on the currently selected OM class or object. This dialog is used to inspect and edit OM classes and objects over page and diagram boundaries.
The Browse & Edit Class dialog is described in detail Browse & Edit Class Dialog.
Issues a dialog where the width and height can be adjusted. The values will be saved.
Enlarging the drawing, the current page may not fit any longer into the paper that is defined with the Print preferences; the result may be a page that requires multiple sheets of paper when printed.
This operation selects all objects contained within the drawing area, or all text in the text window.
This MSC command displays and possibly modifies the status of timers.
For more information see Displaying and Modifying Status.
This MSC command presents the Make Space dialog, where space for events may be inserted.
This SC command changes the orientation of the selected SC transition line(s).
This MSC command changes the orientation of a selected message. The new direction is indicated by a change in the orientation and position of the message end and of the message parameters.
This MSC command opens a dialog that is used to connect a selected condition or MSC reference symbol to one or multiple instances.
Figure 292 : The Connect dialog (for a condition)
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The Name field allows you to enter or change the name of the condition or MSC reference.
The Instance List lists all possible instances that are concurrent with the condition or MSC reference.
This MSC command creates a new diagram of an instance axis in the original diagram. The instance axis you decompose is marked decomposed. In the new diagram you can specify the interior of the decomposed instance.
The messages to and from the decomposed instance are displayed as found and lost messages (see MSC Symbols and Lines), showing the communication with other instance axes. The decomposed diagram is editable and it is displayed in the Organizer.
The View menu provides rescaling functions and access to various options that affect the behavior of the editor. The View menu contains the following menu choices:
This menu choice issues a dialog where you can adjust the scale.
This menu choice issues a dialog where you can set the options that affect the window properties.
In the dialog, you can set if you want the following items to be displayed:
Click OK to apply the options in the dialog to the current window only.
Click All Windows to apply the options in the dialog to all windows opened by the editor.
This MSC command issues a dialog where you can set the options that determines what should be displayed in the drawing area:
Click OK to apply the options to the current MSC. The diagram options will be saved when you save the file.
Opens a dialog where you can customize the behavior of the editor.
The options are controlled by toggle buttons. They are:
This MSC command issues a dialog where spacing between symbols may be specified. (The dimmed parts of the dialog are for future use.)
Figure 293 : The Insert Options dialog
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This option allows to modify the space which is automatically inserted between the symbols and lines when appended to the chart.
There are two scales for setting the minimum horizontal distance between instance axes and the minimum vertical distance between messages.
This section applies to all editors except MSC.
The Pages menu holds commands that assist you in navigating among the pages in a diagram that are currently being edited in the editor. It also contains commands for adding, renaming and clearing pages as well as clipboard functions for copying, cutting and pasting entire pages.
The Pages menu contains the following menu choices:
This menu choice opens the first page contained in the diagram. The first page is defined according to the order of appearance in the Edit Page dialog.
Activating the Pages menu presents up to four menu choices that consist of the names of the two pages that are sequentially immediately before and after the page being edited. If the first page of the diagram is being edited, the next four sequential pages are shown. If the last page of the diagram is edited, the previous four pages are shown.
Selecting one of these page names opens or restores that page in the editor. To open other pages, the Edit menu choice is used.
This menu choice opens the last page of a diagram.
This menu choice is a shortcut for adding one page to the current diagram. The Add Page dialog is issued and after pressing the OK button the new page is shown.
This menu choice allows to Add, Rename, Clear, Cut, Copy and Paste a page. Following this menu choice, a dialog is issued:
Figure 294 : The Edit Pages dialog
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The meaning of the various components is as follows:
Presents a list with all pages that are included in the diagram. Clicking on a page in this list selects it and makes it the subject of the operation to follow.
Clicking this button opens the selected page and displays it in an editor window. The Edit Page dialog is closed.
Clicking this button removes the selected page from the diagram and saves it in the clipboard buffer.
Clicking this button copies the selected page into the clipboard buffer.
Clicking this button pastes the page contained in the clipboard buffer into the current diagram. A new dialog is issued.
The dialog allows to specify:
This operation clears (removes) the selected page from the diagram.
To confirm the operation, click on Clear. The editor will automatically rename autonumbered pages.
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As stated in the dialog, Clear on a page cannot be undone. |
This command creates a new page which is added to the current diagram.
A new dialog is issued, in which you must insert the page name. You can insert the new page either before or after the current page.
The dialog allows to specify:
Click this button to open a dialog where you can rename the selected page.
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Note: Autonumbered pages cannot be renamed. The autonumbered option must first be turned off. |
When turning the Autonumbered option off, the editor first prompts to confirm the removal of autonumbering on that page.
Turning the Autonumbered option on applies a numeric name to the selected page (1, 2, etc...). A dialog is issued where:
This toggle button designates what page to be opened first when opening a diagram in the editor, if no particular page is specified.
The Diagrams menu records all diagrams that are opened by the editor. The menu choices are:
Select this menu choice to browse back to the diagram that was previously displayed in the window.
Select this menu choice to browse forward to the diagram that was displayed in the window before you selected Back.
The last edited diagram always goes to the top of the list, and subsequently moves the other diagrams down a position. A maximum of 9 open diagrams can be shown. A tenth one will be put at the top of the list, but any subsequent opening of a diagram will only show the last 9 that have been opened.
Each item in the menu provides information about the diagram type, its name, a slash (`/') followed by a page name, a hyphen and, possibly, the file it is stored on (the file information is missing if the diagram has never been saved).
A diagram that is preceded by an asterisk (`*') denotes that it has been modified during the editor session.
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Note: OM, SC and HMSC diagrams are listed in the same Diagrams menu, whereas MSC diagrams are listed only in the Diagrams menu of the MSC Editor window. |
This menu choice becomes available when a maximum of 9 open diagrams has been surpassed. When List All is selected, it provides a dialog containing all diagrams that are currently open in the editor. Select a diagram and click Edit to display it.
The Window menu contains the following menu choices:
This command opens a new editor window containing a new view on the page or MSC contained in the source window from which this menu choice was operated. The page or MSC can be edited in any window.
This option closes the open window, but, not necessarily the diagram.
If more than one editor window is opened, only the current window is closed and not the diagram. If the last open editor window is closed, the editor will act as if Exit has been chosen, possibly in conjunction with a save of information.
For more information, see Close Diagram).
Opens the Entity Dictionary window. See The Entity Dictionary.
This MSC command issues a dialog as shown in Figure 295, displaying additional information about the currently selected MSC object.
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The dialog presents:
If more than one editor window is open the other windows are listed here. The behavior of this list will be similar with the diagrams list in the Diagrams Menu. The only difference is that the menu items will not provide the diagram file information.
This menu choice will be available only if more than 9 editor windows are open, and have the same functionality as the List All menu choice in the Diagrams menu.
The Tools menu contains the following menu choices:
All Link commands are described in Link Commands in the Tools Menus.
This menu choice allows you to search for a text in the current diagram or document in any editor. You can search several diagrams and documents at the same time.
This command issues an external text editor and creates a temporary file from the currently selected text. The text can from now on only be edited in the external editor. The editor is updated every time the external text editor saves the temporary file. When the temporary file is no longer edited, the editing control returns to the editor.
Which external text editor to use is defined by the preference SDT* TextEditor.
This command issues a message where the graphical reference for the currently selected object is displayed.
The syntax of the graphical references used in the editor is described in SDT References.
This SC command transforms a State Chart to an SDL process diagram.
When the conversion is done, the SDL Editor displays the newly created process diagram. A new diagram is created for every conversion. The diagram resides in an unsaved SDL Editor buffer.
The transformation rules that are applied to the SC diagram are described in Converting State Charts to SDL.
The Navigate menu choice displays a (H)MSC diagram referenced by the reference symbol or a decomposed MSC.
Since a reference symbol may contain more than one reference name the HMSC Editor presents a dialog where you can choose reference name.
Pressing this button will show the diagram selected in the Navigation names list. If an (H)MSC diagram with that name is not present in the Organizer, a dialog will be shown. If more than one (H)MSC with the same name is present in the Organizer, an error message will be issued.
There are a number of situations when the dialog is not presented and the referenced diagram is shown immediately:
For reference navigation to work correctly it is required that the expression in the symbol is syntactically correct so that the names in the symbol can be extracted. Check out Syntax rules in Symbols. If you try to navigate from a symbol with incorrect syntax you will be notified with a dialog that points out the location of the error in the reference symbol text.
If you select a symbol that is not present in the Organizer you will be presented with a dialog where you can create either an MSC or an HMSC diagram.
With this MSC and HMSC command you can save an MSC using the Z.120 MSC-PR format. (MSC-PR can also be read by the MSC Editor, see Managing MSCs). The MSC Editor normally stores the MSCs using a binary storage format.
To generate MSC-PR:
.mpr file extension, i.e. <diagramname>.mprSince free comment symbols, i.e. comment symbols that are not connected to any other symbol, are not permitted in MSC-PR but can be defined using the MSC Editor, free comment symbols are converted to text symbols in the generated MSC-PR.
The File menu provides functions that transfer text from a file to the text window and vice-versa. The basic intention is to provide you a means to edit larger portions of text with a more suitable text editor. Another possibility to edit text externally is to use the Connect to Text Editor command in the Tools menu. The available menu choices are:
Import imports the contents of a file into the text window and inserts the contents of the file at the current I-beam cursor position, possibly replacing selected text in the text window. A file selection dialog is issued, where the file to import text from is to be specified. The file name filter is set to *.txt by default.
Export exports the text window contents to a file. A file selection dialog is issued, where the file to export the text to is to be specified. The file name filter is set to *.txt by default.