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Introduction
Common Interchange Format
CIF (Common Interchange Format) is a text format specified by -
ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union) in the recommendation Z.106 to ease the interchange of graphical SDL specifications. SDL-CIF is an extension to SDL/PR and is based on the SDL/PR syntax and can be read and written by tools as well as users. The CIF constructs are expressed as comments preceding the PR code. The advantages of such a text format are:
- SDL diagrams may be stored in version control systems that only accept text files.
- The format is human readable.
- It makes it possible to convert diagrams, including their layout, to and from other SDL toolsets that support CIF.
- It also makes it possible to revert to previous versions of the SDL Suite, by using CIF as an intermediate format and re-opening the CIF files in an older version of the SDL Suite to become SDL-GR.
However, CIF cannot be used as a storage format for files in the SDL Suite as it is required that specification stored in CIF file must be complete and correct.
CIF <-> SDT Converters
The CIF2SDT and SDT2CIF converters make the advantages of the CIF format available to the SDL Suite tools. The converters are implemented as a binary that can be run in a textual, command-line mode from the OS prompt, or as separate applications with graphical user interfaces (in Windows). The converter tools can also be launched from the Organizer using the menu choices Convert GR to CIF and Convert CIF to GR from the Generate menu.
The conversion between CIF and the binary format is performed as follows:
- When converting to CIF, the tool SDT2CIF is used. CIF comments will be generated close to the corresponding SDL/PR code.
- When converting from CIF, the tool CIF2SDT is used. Both CIF comments and SDL/PR code are considered. CIF comments control conversion, while the text for symbols is extracted from the SDL/PR code.
Generally, one CIF file contains several SDL diagrams. However, the placement of generated diagrams can be specified by the user.
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