Navigation links in generated documentation

• US 20020029231A1
• Filed: 04/20/2001
• Published: 03/07/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 10/05/1999
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Borland Software Corporation (Open Text Corporation)
• Original Assignee: TogetherSoft Corporation (Open Text Corporation)
• Inventors: Charisius, Dietrich, Aptus, Alexander
• Granted Patent: US 7,114,149 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/513
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/20 Software design
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/34 Graphical or visual programming
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/35 model driven
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/36 Software reuse
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/71 Version control security arrangements therefor G06F21/57; Configuration management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/75 Structural analysis for program understanding

Abstract

Methods and systems consistent with the present invention provide an improved software development tool that generates HTML documentation for source code in a software project. The HTML documentation includes graphical and textual documentation. The software development tool utilizes the linking capabilities of HTML to provide navigation links between the graphical and textual documentation, thus facilitating navigation through and viewing of the documentation.

Claims

1. A method in a data processing system for generating documentation for source code, the method comprising the steps of:

generating textual documentation that describes the source code, the textual documentation having portions that correspond to portions of the source code;

generating a diagram including diagram elements that visually represent the portions of source code; and

correlating the diagram elements to the corresponding portions of the textual documentation.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of correlating includes generating HTML hyperlink references from the diagram elements to the corresponding portions of the textual documentation.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of generating a diagram includes generating an image map for an image of the diagram.

4. A data processing system for generating documentation for source code in a software project, comprising:

means for generating textual documentation that describes the source code, the textual documentation having portions that correspond to portions of the source code;

means for generating a diagram including diagram elements that visually represent the portions of source code; and

means for correlating the diagram elements to the corresponding portions of the textual documentation.

5. A computer-readable medium containing instructions for controlling a data processing system to perform a method for generating documentation for source code, the method comprising the steps of:

generating textual documentation that describes the source code, the textual documentation having portions that correspond to portions of the source code;

generating a diagram including diagram elements that visually represent the portions of source code; and

correlating the diagram elements to the corresponding portions of the textual documentation.

6. The computer readable medium of claim 5, wherein the step of generating textual documentation comprises generating hyptertext markup language (HTML) documentation.

7. The computer readable medium of claim 6, wherein the step of generating a diagram comprises generating a graphics interchange format (GIF) image and generating an image map for the image.

8. A data processing system, comprising:

a secondary storage device containing a software project, the software project comprising source code;

a memory comprising a software development tool that generates documentation that describes the source code, the documentation including a diagram portion and a text portion and having links between the diagram portion and the text portion; and

a processor for running the software development tool.

9. The data processing system of claim 8, wherein the documentation is hypertext markup language (HTML) documentation displayable by a web browser.

10. The data processing system of claim 8, wherein the links between the diagram portion and the text portion are hypertext markup language (HTML) links.

11. A method for generating documentation for source code and for a diagram that visually represents the source code, the method comprising the steps of:

generating textual documentation that describes the source code;

generating images corresponding to the diagram that are displayable by an application;

mapping the images into regions; and

generating hyperlink references from the regions to the textual documentation.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the step of generating textual documentation comprises generating hypertext markup language (HTML) documentation.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the step of generating images comprises generating graphics interchange format (GIF) images that are displayable by a web browser.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein the step of mapping the images comprising mapping the images into rectangular regions.