## 2 What’s new in Msc-generator 8.6 ¶

The improvements added since version 8.5 are listed below. If you are new to Msc-generator, you should probably jump to Getting started.

- Added chart inlining which allows to draw a chart of any type in a signalling chart or block diagram. This means that you can draw a signalling chart in a block or add a graph to a signalling chart. Graphviz graphs cannot inline other charts, as this would require large changes to its grammar, not only simple extensions.

  In signalling charts use the `symbol block` or `symbol gv` command followed by a location and the inlined chart’s text enclosed between `<<<` and `>>>` symbols.

  For Block Diagrams, the new `chart` block type can be used followed by chart type and the chart text similarly enclosed. See the Examples.

- [signalling] Now you can position symbols (including inlined charts as above) in relation to other elements of the chart. So far you had to specify horizontal and vertical position in relation to entity lines and markers. Now you can position symbols left of, right of, above, below or even around other chart elements. See the example when searching for ‘`ref`’.
- [block] Added `aspect_ratio` attribute to blocks.
- [block] Added `grid` routing type to route either horizontally or vertically.
- [block] Added new ports to boxes, like `A@s30`, which means places the end of an arrow at 30% of the south (downward) edge of the box.
- [block] Improvements to arrow layout and de-overlapping
- [block] Added `tangent` and `tangent_upside_down` for `label.orient` for arrows. These rotate the label to align with the direction of the arrow.

And many fixes and improvements in the CLI GUI, hinting and elsewhere:

- Improved contour performance by another 24%, bringing the total average reduction in execution time of Expand and Union operations since v8.4 to 42% (almost x2 speed with operation on large contours being 3-6x faster).
- [gui] fix: Tab key moves the cursor when no indenting
- [gui] fix: Ctrl+bksp shall only delete backwards
- [gui] fix: Ctrl+X/C on a full line shall make Ctrl+V insert a full line (even on last line)
- [gui] fix: pressing End shall remove selection even if at the end of the selection (even on last line)
- [gui] fix: last character not colored
- [gui] fix: Shift+Left shall select only to the end of the word
- [gui] fix: Shortcuts to dialog buttons.
- [gui] fix: Starting help does not block the app
- [gui] fix: Error squiggles now show up at the line ends (8.6.1)
- [signalling] fix: note keyword with nothing after shall parse gracefully
- [signalling] fix: byref vertical to {}
- [block] fix: color token should allow negative numbers, to be used in setting `margin`
- [signalling] fix: `adjust` shall not decrease the size of the symbol negative. Emit a warning if the symbol disappears.
- [signalling] fix: `size` for symbols should also accept a number.
- [signalling] fix: increase chart size when closing an activated entity
- [block] fix: names for cloned unnamed blocks
- fix: pedantic the same for inline chart CSH
- [graph] fix: Rename Entities did not work with multiple graphs.
- [gui] more CLI options available with GUI
- [gui] fix: hinting (also in languages)
- [block] fix: retail labels of joined blocks even with fill color
- [graph] fix: a crash on Windows with A->A edges (#94, thanks Jiří)
- [cli] fix: starting with –tei-mode without -S no longer crashes (8.6.1)