Abstract
The work we describe in this paper formed the background to two large government-funded projects, GIST and DRAFTER, which aim to provide intelligent tools for the automatic generation of multilingual versions of technical documents in two domains: administrative forms and software documentation, respectively.1 In order to draft a realistic set of requirements for the generation tools we intended to create, we felt it was necessary to acknowledge that they should not be seen as stand-alone tools. Instead, if they were to be accepted by writers, they would need to be integrated as closely as possible into the technical writers’ current use of computer tools and into their wider working practices.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Barrett, Edward (ed.) (1988). Text, Con Text and Hyper Text: Writing With and For the Computer. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
British Standards Institution. (1992–3). Technical Manuals - BS 4884. London: BSI.
Brockmann, R. John. (1990). Writing Better Computer User Documentation. New York: John Wiley.
Chikofsky, E. J. and Rubenstein, B. L. (1988). CASE: Reliability engineering for information systems. IEEE Software 5 (2), pp. 11–17.
Chisholm, Richard M. (1988). ‘Improving the Management of Technical Writers: Creating a Context for Usable Documentation’, in S. Doheny-Farina (ed.), Effective Documentation: What We Have Learned from Research. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Constantine, L. L. and Yourdon, E. (1979). Structured Design. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Doheny-Farina, Stephen (ed.). (1988). Effective Documentation: What We Have Learned from Research. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Doheny-Farina, Stephen. (1992). Rhetoric, Innovation, Technology: Case Studies of Technical Communication in Technology Transfers. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Duffy, Thomas M. (1995). ‘Designing Tools to Aid Technical Editors: A Needs Analysis’. Technical Communication 42 (2), pp. 262–77.
Flower, L., Schriver, K. A., Carey, L., Haas, C. and Hayes, J. R. (1989). Planning in Writing: The Cognition of a Constructive Process (Tech. Rep. No. 34 ). Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Writing at University of California, Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University.
Grice, Roger A. (1988). ‘Information Development is Part of Product Development - Not an Afterthought’, in E. Barrett (ed.), Text, Con Text and Hyper Text: Writing With and For the Computer. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Iordanskaya, L., Kim, M., Kittredge, R., Lavoie B. and Polguère, A. (1992). ‘Generation of Extended Bilingual Statistical Reports’. Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Computational Linguistics, 1019–23.
Kittredge, Richard I. and Polguère, Alain (1991). ‘Generating Extended Bilingual Texts from Application Knowledge Bases’. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Fundamental Research for the Future Generation of Natural Language Processing, pp. 147–60. Kyoto: ATR Interpreting Telephony Research Laboratories.
Lay, Mary M. and Karis, William M. (eds). (1991). Collaborative Writing in Industry: Investigations in Theory and Practice. Amityville, NY: Baywood.
Lee, Arthur (1993). ‘Controlled English with and without Machine Translation’. Machine Translation Today. Proceedings of Translating and the Computer 15, 35–9. London: Aslib.
Levine, Lawrence B. (1988). ‘Corporate Culture, Technical Documentation and Organisation Diagnosis’, in E. Barrett (ed.), Text, Con Text and Hyper Text: Writing With and For the Computer. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Mrazek, Deborah and Rafeld, Michael (1992). ‘Integrating Human Factors on a Large Scale: Product Usability Champions’. Proceedings of CHI 1992, 565–70.
Norman, Don A. (1988). The Psychology of Everyday Things. Basic Books: New York.
Pym, Peter J. (1991). ‘Simplified English and Machine Translation’. Professional Translator and Interpreter 2, 5–9.
Scholz, J and Hansen, M. (1993). ‘Usability Testing a Minimal Manual for the Intel Satis FA Xtion Faxmodem’. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication Vol. 36, No. 1, 7–11.
Sharples, Mike, Goodlet, James and Pemberton, Lyn (1992). ‘Developing a Writer’s Assistant’, in J. Hartley (ed.), Technology and Writing: Readings in the Psychology of Written Communication, pp. 209–20. London: Kingsley.
Smith, John B. and Lansman, Marcy (1992). ‘Designing Theory Based Systems: A Case Study’. Proceedings of CHI 1992, 479–88.
Sproull, Lee and Kiesler, Sara (1992). Connections: New Ways of Working in the Networked Organisation. Second edition. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Wilkin, Lorraine and Wulff, Wendie (1990). ‘Document Means More Than Manual: Document Design outside the Computer Industry’. Proceedings of SIGDOC 1990, 79–86.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1996 Springer-Verlag London Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pemberton, L., Gorman, L., Hartley, A., Power, R. (1996). Computer Support for Producing Software Documentation: Some Possible Futures. In: Sharples, M., van der Geest, T. (eds) The New Writing Environment. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1482-6_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1482-6_6
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-76011-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-1482-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive