Automated user documentation generation based on the Eclipse application model

Abstract

An application’s user documentation, also referred to as the user manual, is one of the core elements required in application distribution. While there exist many tools to aid an application’s developer in creating and maintaining documentation on and for the code itself, there are no tools that are complementing code development with user documentation for modern graphical applications. Approaches like literate programming are not applicable to this scenario, as not a library, but a full, user interface capable, application is to be documented to an end user. Documentation generation on applications, up to now, was only partially feasible due to the gap between the code and its semantics. The new generation of Eclipse rich client platform developed applications is based on an application model, closing a broad semantic gap between code and visible interface. We use this application model to provide a semantic description for the contained elements. Combined with the internal relationships of the application model, these semantic descriptions are aggregated to well-structured user documentations that comply with ISO/IEC 26514.