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### 9.6 Verticals

A vertical is one of the following.

- a box or an arrow with a general direction of up and down as opposed to regular arrows or boxes, which go from left to right;
- a brace or bracket, to show grouping of things;
- a range to mark a time period and to comment on it; or
- a pointer which points from one point at an entity’s timeline to another representing some cause/effect or a timer. This also has a version, where the pointer "lost" (e.g., to indicate a timer expiring).

    vertical [shape | [from] symbol [to]] [at position] [attributes...];

The shape keyword can be one of `box`, `block` `brace`, `bracket`, `range` or `pointer` or can be omitted. These variations result in different shapes, see the examples further down.

The from and to represent markers and specify the vertical position of the vertical. Markers can be placed with the `mark` command to mark a vertical position. (See more on marking at the end of this section.) The third line of the example below places a marker named `top` just below the enitiy headings. Then this marker is referenced by the vertical as the upper edge of it. The other marker is omitted in the example, it is then assumed to be the current vertical position. The mark command can have an `offset` attribute, which takes a number and shifts the position down by that many pixels (up for negative numbers).

There are two built-in markers, that are available without the `mark` command: `chart.top` and `chart.bottom` referring top the top and bottom of the entire chart, respectively.

Between the two positions, one of the box or arrow symbols can be used: ‘`--`’, ‘`..`’, ‘`++`’, ‘`==`’, ‘`->`’, ‘`=>`’, ‘`>`’ or ‘`>>`’. If we omitted the shape specifier these symbols result in a box or a block arrow. The arrow symbols can be used in bidirectional or reverse variants, as well. For ranges and pointers the box symbols result in no arrowheads, for braces and brackets there is no difference between the box and arrow symbols, they only control the line style.

You can omit both markers. In this case the vertical spans besides the chart element before it. You can group a set of chart elements with curly braces and specify a vertical immediately after to make it span along the entire group. (This is a simpler way than to use the `mark` command.) You can even omit the symbol making it default to `->`48. The above chart can also be written as below.

Verticals can contain a label, which can be rotated 90 degrees compared to other elements. This can be set via the `side` attribute, which specifies from which direction the text is readable from (`left`, `right` or `end`, which means the regular horizontal typeset). If you sent `side=end` to typeset the label horizontally, you can use word wrapping by setting `text.wrap=yes`. If you do so (even if via the default text attribute), you must specify a text width for each such vertical to do the wrapping in. Use the `text.width` attribute for this purpose. Verticals with vertically typeset text ignore the `text.wrap` attribute and do no label word wrapping.

The text after the ‘`at`’ keyword determines the horizontal location of the vertical. The horizontal position is defined in relation to entity positions. It can be placed onto an entity, left or right from it, or between two entities. These are specified as ‘`<entity>`’, ‘`<entity>-`’, `<entity>+` or ‘`<entity1>-<entity2>`’, respectively. You can also specify any distance from an entity by adding a number after the first form, such as in ‘`at <entity> <number>`’. The number will be interpreted in pixels and shifts the vertical left or right depending on its sign. Use a space before the number.

You can also omit the `at` clause, which results in the vertical being placed besides the entities it spans (by default on the right side of them using ‘`<entity>+`’). If, however, the `side` attribute is set to `right` (to mean that the text is readable from the right direction), the vertical is placed left of the entities is spans besides.

Verticals specified to be besides an entity (with ‘`<entity>-`’, ‘`<entity>--`’, ‘`<entity>+`’ or ‘`<entity>++`’ horizontal locations) are placed further from the entity line if there are boxes or elements in the way. Only those elements are considered, which are specified in the input file before vertical. If the vertical references markers below it, it may overlap with later elements, thus it is a good idea only to mark the top of the vertical and specify the vertical itself at the bottom location (as in all the examples)49. The `makeroom` attribute is a boolean value defaulting to yes. When it is turned off verticals are not considered when entity distances are calculated with `hscale=auto`. When `makeroom` is on, Msc-generator attempts to take the vertical into account when laying out entities. In a well-designed case you can even nest verticals, as a vertical specified earlier will be considered by subsequent verticals (but only if its `makeroom` attribute is set to yes).

Below is a picture demonstrating all shapes of verticals. Here are a few tips on them.

The radius of the curves of the brace vertical can be adjusted with the `line.radius` attribute and defaults to 8. The width of the bracket vertical can also be influenced with the same attribuet. In addition you can set the `line.corner` attribute to `round` or `bevel` to influence the corners of the bracket. The range vertical can display either an arrow or just a simple line depending on whether you use the arrow or box symbols. In case you specify an arrow, you can adjust the arrowhead via the `arrow.*` attributes.

The pointer vertical can be marked with an asterisk as being lost. If so it displays the same loss symbol that is used at lost messages (see Lost Messages) and you can use the `x.size` and `x.line.*` attributes to control its appearance. Note that you cannot control the exact location of the loss symbol (via the `lost at` construct), it is always at the bottom of the pointer.

Finally, about the `mark` command. You can mark a position between chart elements or the centerline of an arrow or box. This can be expressed via the `centerline` attribute (the `yes` and `destination` values are equivalent.) In order for this to work, the marker must be immediately after an arrow or box. Note that other elements do not have centerline. Distinguishing source and destination centerlines makes sense only for slanted arrows or arrows starting and ending at the same entity. You can also add the `offset` attrinute to specify certain number of pixels above (negative) or below (positive) the position. This can be used in combination with centerline, if needed.

Note that in these complex cases the layout engine makes its best attempt at automatic horizontal spacing and compression, but sometimes it fails. Please report especially annoying cases.

#### Footnotes

##### (48)

But you cannot omit both the shape and symbol.

##### (49)

Note that Msc-generator does not lay out verticals entirely correctly in relation to parallel blocks.

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