### 3.6 The command-line tool ¶

The command-line version of Msc-generator runs on all supported platforms. On Windows it is installed to the same directory as the windowed application. That directory is included in the PATH, so you can call it from anywhere.

The command line version of Msc-generator supports PNG, PDF, EPS, SVG and PPT graphics output formats, plus EMF on Windows. It can compile and extrack chart texts embedded in PNG and PPT files and it can also embed the result back to a PNG or PPT file (the latter using Alt-text embedding).

To use Msc-generator to generate a signalling chart from a text file (containing a singalling chart description in the appropriate language) simply type

    msc-gen -T pdf inputfile.signalling

To use Msc-generator to generate a graph or block diagram from a text file (containing a graph description in the DOT or block languages, respectively ) simply type

    msc-gen -T pdf inputfile.graph

or

    msc-gen -T pdf inputfile.block

All of these will give you `inputfile.pdf`. You can change ‘`pdf`’ to get the other file formats. If you omit the ‘`-T`’ switch altogether, a PNG will be generated.

If Msc-generator has successfully generated an output, it prints ‘`Success.`’. Instead, or in addition, it may print warnings or errors, when it does not understand something.