CRDSS_Task2-12-1_DocumentationCoordinationYear2Efforts

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CRDSS TASK MEMORANDUM 2.12-1 Documentation Coordination Documentation Coordination Year 2 Efforts 1.0 ISSUE This task memorandum describes the documentation coordination efforts for Year 2 of CRDSS. 2.0 DISCUSSION/ANALYSIS Documentation coordination is a task that normally occurs in any project. However, with the advent of the World Wide Web (WWW), and the desire to make nearly all CRDSS documentation available on- line, a documentation coordination task was implemented in order to help coordinate the assimilation and transferral of working documents and manuals to on-line documentation as well as coordinating preparation of hard-copy documentation. In Year 1of CRDSS, the use of hypertext documentation was implemented by RTi as a way of easily distributing documentation. This form of documentation was new to many of the groups participating in the CRDSS development, but had been implemented by RTi on several projects. The use of the WWW has since greatly expanded, and, consequently, so have the expectations for the implementation of on- line documentation within CRDSS. Several issues related to the expanded use of on-line documentation within CRDSS are: ? The need for all on-line documentation to look and feel similar ? The need for on-line documentation to support different web browsers ? The increased use of a web browser to access the database ? The increased desire to make the on-line and hard copy documentation match as much as possible, if not entirely ? Legal issues to be resolved by the State concerning use of and billing for information provided by the CRDSS web site ? Results of CRDSS are easily viewable by many interested parties and therefore results and products may be scrutinized even more than usual for this type of project Because the emphasis on on-line documentation has increased dramatically within the project, much of this memorandum addresses on-line documentation as if it were the primary deliverable for documentation. Hard-copy is discussed where CRDSS deliverables were defined. The Year 2 effort was broken into several subtasks which are summarized below. Conclusions and recommendations follow and present insight related to the issues listed above. Subtask 1. Update on-line documentation to reflect changes in database, mode, and analysis system documentation. Early in the project, it was decided that each developer/author should maintain the documentation for their product. Initially, the value of on-line documentation was not totally recognized. Therefore, some 1 a320/taskmems/ 2-12-01.doc 01/03/97