Interoperability of Software Documents

Ethan V. Munson

Abstract

The software development process produces a diverse collection of documents ranging from requirements specifications to architecture diagrams to program source code to bug reports. Some are written in formal languages, but others, while highly structured, are written in natural language. The content of these documents is interconnected in complex ways. For instance, a {\em change report} might describe how {\em source code} was modified to conform to a {\em design specification}, the problem having been identified because {\em test output} was incorrect. The current state of the art in software development environments uses many different, and often incompatible, tools to manage these different documents. Many significant advances in interaction for the software development process will not be possible until all the documents it produces interoperate.

Full text in PostScript.


Published in the "informal" proceedings of the Workshop on Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction, Sorrento, Italy, May 1994.