Automatic Documentation Generation: The Interaction of Text and Examples

Abstract

Good documentation is critical for user acceptance of any system, and empirical studies have shown that examples can greatly increase effectiveness of system documentation. However, studies also show that badly integrated text and examples can be actually detrimental compared to using either text or examples alone. It is thus clear that in order to provide useful documentation automatically, a system must be capable of providing well-integrated examples to illustrate its points. Precious work on example generation has concentrated on the issue of retrieving or constructing examples. In this paper, we look at the integration of text and examples. We identify how text and examples co-constrain each other and show that a system must consider example generation as an integral part of the generation process. Finally, we present such a system, together with example. Documentation, Natural language generation examples.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1993
Accession Number
ADA269670

Entities

People

  • Cecile L. Paris
  • Vibhu O. Mittal

Organizations

  • University of Southern California

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Automatic
  • Classification
  • Cognitive Science
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Demographic Cohorts
  • Educational Psychology
  • Expert Systems
  • Grammars
  • Information Science
  • Integrals
  • Language
  • Linguistics
  • Mathematics
  • Natural Languages
  • Psychology

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Science.
  • Systems Analysis and Design