## 3 Getting started

Msc-generator is a program that parses textual chart descriptions and produces graphical output in a variety of file formats, or as a Windows OLE object, which can be embedded in documents, such as Word or PowerPoint. It currently supports two kind of charts: Message Sequence Charts (MSCs, this is where the name of the tool comes from) and general graphs.

On Windows Msc-generator is installing as a regular application. You can start it directly, by clicking on a file with .signalling, .graph or .block extension; or by opening an chart embedded in a document (usually by double-clicking it).

The Msc-generator window has the usual elements of a Windows application: menu bar, a ribbon and a status bar. We will briefy discuss these here and give a more detailed description in Usage Reference.

You can use the scrollbars to navigate around in the chart. You can also grab the chart by the mouse and drag it (if not all of it fits into the window).

You can also reposition the pane of the internal editor and the error list by clicking on their title bar and dragging them to a new location. On the example above, the internal editor has been moved to the right side from the left (which is the default). You can even create floating windows out of these panes.

If you accidentally close the internal editor, use the ‘`Text Editors...`’ button on the ribbon and re-select ‘`Internal Editor`’.