Certainly by the time the DSM solution is being deployed to a
wider group, there will be a desire for producing traditional documentation from the
DSM models themselves.
The requirement for modeling language documentation is probably objectively
more important for project success. However, making models too available
in a traditional documentation format makes management happier, and the
resulting sponsorship is an even better determiner for the continuation of
the project. We may not like it, but we would be unwise to ignore it: the alternative
is to teach the manager to use the DSM tool, but that could be far more
dangerous. . .
Plain text is rarely suf?¬?cient to qualify as a traditional documentation format: at
least basic character formatting is required. Going beyond the lowest common
denominator of plain text poses a problem. It is not suf?¬?cient to knowthat we want the
?¬?rst line to be bold and a larger font, we also need to pick a particular editor or viewer
for this formatted or rich text. The choice of tool is in?¬‚uenced by many factors,
including:
. who will use the documentation;
. in what environment and form;
. what tools work there or are already present; and
. what ?¬?le formats the tool supports.
The last factor is of course vital for generation, since the most sensible way to
output documentation from models is as a plain text ?¬?le with syntax to express
formatting.
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