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State Overview Files and State Matrices


The Organizer can produce a state overview file, see State Overview. The Text Editor recognizes a state overview file by the extension .ins. If such a file is opened in the Text Editor, the Text Editor extracts information from the file and presents the information as a read-only text file containing state matrices. State overview files cannot be edited or saved in the Text Editor.

A state matrix is a textual table with the states in a process or procedure along one dimension and the signals in the same process or procedure along the other dimension. In the table, you will find the transitions for the process or procedure.

A state matrix may look like this: ("-" means no signal)

Process Main: nextstates

States
a Start state
b Game_Off
c Game_On
         |  STATES
SIGNALS  |  a    b    c
         |-------------
-        |  b          
Newgame  |       c     
Endgame  |            b

The Text Editor keeps track of how entities in the state matrix is related to the SDL system. This makes it possible to navigate back to the SDL system. To do so, place the text cursor close to an entity in a state matrix and bring up the pop-up menu for that entity and invoke one of the available menu choices.

A state overview file can be saved as a normal text file. This might be useful if you want to edit a state matrix. But by doing so, you will lose all the extra information associated with the state matrices that is not visible when viewing a state overview file in the text editor. You will no longer be able to:


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