This is an abstract base class for a schedule element. Instances of the Schedule and Firing subclasses are used to construct a static schedule. A schedule can be thought of as a structure that consists of an iteration count and a list of schedule elements. A schedule element can contain an actor, or it can contain another schedule. It is usually required that, all of the lowest-level schedule elements must contain an actor. It is up to the scheduler to enforce this, however. The Schedule class is a schedule element that contains a schedule. The Firing class is a schedule element that contains an actor. Therefore, the top-level schedule element must be an instance of Schedule, and all of the lowest-level elements must each be an instance of Firing.
This base class implements the getIterationCount() and setIterationCount() methods, which return and set the iteration count for this schedule element. A default value of 1 is used for the iteration count.
@author Brian K. Vogel
@version $Id: ScheduleElement.java,v 1.32 2006/08/21 23:12:21 cxh Exp $
@since Ptolemy II 1.0
@Pt.ProposedRating Green (vogel)
@Pt.AcceptedRating Yellow (chf)
@see ptolemy.actor.sched.Firing
@see ptolemy.actor.sched.Schedule