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<Paper uid="C96-2124">
  <Title>Building Knowledge Bases for the Generation of Software Documentation *</Title>
  <Section position="3" start_page="0" end_page="734" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Background
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> Researchers in user interface design have started to build tools which produce both code and documentation. These tools tend 1,o be based on a cei1tral inodel of the interface under developme.nt, the interface modal, a formal representation which can be used not only for code generation but also fbr document generation, e.g., (Puerta and Szekely, 1994; Moriyon et al., 1994). Moriyon et al (1994), for example, haw~ used the interface model in the generation of on-line help. Their help messages indicate the actions a user can perform in a partitular situation and what would result from these actions. They report, however, that task-oriented help is beyond the capabilities of their system; task-oriented help would indicate why the user might want to perform any of the actions that are available.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> In general, however, the doculnentation, produeed by these systems is limited in two main ways: it does not correspond to task-oriented documentation, which is, however, what end-users re- null quire and it is usually based on siint)le template generation, which does not allow flexibility with regard to the style of the text t)rodueed or the language that is used. These limitatioils stem, on the one hand, fl'om the fact that interface models in general contain systcm-or'icnted informatiem (e.g., what hat)pens when a button is pushed) but 1tot task-oriented inforlnation (e.g., why one might want to push the button), and, on the other hand, from the focus of the research, that is system and interLtce design and not natural langm~ge generation. null In the 1)I{AI,&amp;quot;I'EII. projeel;, we have attcmt~ted I;() address these two issues. We address the tirst by providing reels that allow technical authors to buiht richer interface models. These rMmr models integrate task information into the information already available in interface models. This task information, which is commonly tbund in task models, e.g., GeMS (Card et al., 1983), supi)orts the production of user-centred doeument;ttion. W'e address the second by providing more general text generation facilities whic.h supt)ort multiple styles and multiple languages.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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