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Documentation Designer
Tips and Trips
Don Kranz: Coad-Certified Mentor
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Welcome
A software project’s primary goal is the production of frequent, tangible, working systems. It is important to make sure that ALL of the team (Managers, Marketing, Sales, Users(production), Analysts, and Developers) know what are the goals, how they are getting there, and what to do once they've arrived. That is the reason documentation is core to a project's success.
Introductions 2
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• …it is possible to write requirements and specifications that customers, testers, programmers and technical writers will actually read, understand and use.
Benjamin L. Kovitz,Practical Software Requirements: A Manual of Content and Style
• What’s the same … Need for accurate and maintainable documentationAndy Carmichael, Object UK
• Your challenge is to deliver the documentation without unduly restricting the development. …The documentation must be developed concurrently with the system.
Murray R. Cantor, Object-Oriented Project Management with UML
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Documentation
• Often the last item “thrown together” by the project team.
• Often not read by intended audience.
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Why We Don’t Write Documentation
• Time consuming
• Not “cool” part of project
• Lack writing skills
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Why We Don’t Read Documentation
• Time consuming
• Difficult to use
• Poorly written–Doesn’t Match Delivered System
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Documentation In Together ®
Writing• Time
consuming
• Not “cool”
• Poor skills
Reading• Time
consuming
• Difficult to use
• Poorly written
• Doesn’t Match
Solution• Speed doc generation
• Make docs easily available
• Tools for Tech writer
• Simplify finding needed information
• Allow implementation of best writing practices
• Always Matches!
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Don’s DocGen Comments
The DocGen utility exists to simplify the production of printed or on-line documentation for our users. We should continually improve this portion of our product with that goal in mind. Currently some things are pretty cool (very powerful) for helping the user, others require a deeper knowledge of the product, and some things are missing or just plain ugly.
Working with DocGen is a great way to prepare yourself for working with Together on a deeper level. Once you start using the expression you will need to learn about the RWI openapi. Next you will want to customize the property inspector (or diagrams) which requires knowledge of the config files (or now the java source for the inspector). Then you will begin to modify the behavior of DocGen itself this leads you to the metamodel. Eventually all this will lead you to working with the API directly. Hopefully this will the encourage you to work with templates and patterns to get information into the models in the most efficient manner.
All of this is focused towards making Together a more productive environment for the end user. The entire cycle seems to feed off of itself, and help improve the product as a whole.
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Documentation Designer
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Launching Documentation Designer
Main Menu: Tools | Documentation | Design Template
• Generate Documentation Dialog: Design button
Explorer Pane, Modules tab: Design Documentation module
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DocGen Window
Menu
Scope Pane Area Pane
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DocGen Scope
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DocGen Area
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DocGen Scope
Page Header
Report Header
Details
Report Footer
Page Footer
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Exercise 1
Build a summary introductory table that allows navigation to more detailed information.
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Sample Project
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Create New Report Template
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New Report Template (.tpl)
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File | Save As …
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Set up Summary Table
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Add Columns to Summary
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Add Columns to Summary (2)
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Insert A Formula
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Test the Report
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Initial Table Summary
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Clean up the Format
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Clean up the Format (2)
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Clean up the Format (3)
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Clean up the Format (4)
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Fix Formula Bug
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Test Report Again
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Add the Detail Section Heading
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Add the Details
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Test Report Again
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Hyperlink Summary to Detail
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Hyperlink Detail back to Summary
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Run Report
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Run Report
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Run Report
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Run Report
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