Strasbaugh nTellect 7AF - Page 1491

STRASBAUGH, INC.
7AF SECS/GEM Interface Ver. 1.9 February 19, 2002 6-1
Strasbaugh Confidential
6-1
6. SECS Message Detail
This section describes each message sent or understood by the Equipment.
6.1 SML Notation
Message descriptions are shown using "SECS Message Language" (SML) notation. SML is a general notation developed
by GW Associates for describing SECS messages. SML is similar to the notation used in the SECS Standards documents,
but SML is a more precise and regular notation. In SML, the format for a data item is as follows:
< type [ count ] value >
The components are:
<>
Angle Brackets. Each Data Item is enclosed within angle brackets ("less than", "greater than").
This notation implies that each Data Item has a Data Item Format and Data Item Length as
required by SECS-II.
type
This specifies the SECS-II Data Item format. It will have one of the following values:
A ASCII
B Binary
J JIS-8
I1, I2, I4, I8 Signed Integers
U1, U2, U4, U8 Unsigned Integers
F4, F8 Floating Point
BOOLEAN True/False
count
Count of the element values that make up the item. If present, the count is enclosed within
square brackets "[ ]". The count may be omitted, in which case the square brackets are also
omitted.
The "count" specifies the number of value elements in the Data Item Value. For String formats
(ASCII, Binary, JIS-8), "count" specifies the number of characters in the string. For Numeric
formats (I1, I2, I4, I8, U1, U2, U4, U8, F4, F8, BOOLEAN), "count" specifies the number of
values in the array. For simple scalar numeric values, "count" is usually "1". For LIST items,
"count" specifies the number of items in the list.
If "count" is omitted, then the length of the Data Item is implied by the value which follows. The
"count" can range between known limits. It may be specified as minimum and maximum
"counts", separated by two dots. (For example, [0..40]).
value
Value of a single item element. Values are shown in a notation that depends on the item type.
For example, ASCII values are shown as characters enclosed in quotes, Unspecified Binary
values are shown in hexadecimal.
...
Ellipsis (...) is used to indicate additional elements may occur, as for example where
substructures may repeat in a List structure.