Hello Harald,
Thanks for your suggestions
a) I agree that using the same attribute name for two related but subtly different things is adding unnecessary confusion (I fact, confusion was recently observed).
Since the 'period' attribute of flows has a lot of history behind it I'll keep this unchanged.
@Dillip Rout: I generally avoid adding new input definitions as long as the existing ones can be used to achieve the desired results. Also, you may find that there is good reason in keeping the edges/stop-list separate from definition of the vehicles that run these stops (especially, when the departure times of the vehicles are not spaced regularly over the whole day).
In terms of changing ambiguous names, there is a large cost associated with changing things that have been used by many people over many years. The case of route attribute period / cycleTime is special insofar that the feature was added recently and thus will not have been widely adopted yet.
This is not to dismiss thoughts on improvements but rather to point out some of the constraints. Feel free to point out things that are confusing and/or inefficient.
regards,
Jakob