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« on: March 10, 2004, 06:24:35 pm »
Hi Tjerk,
I concur with request. I notice your post is almost 6 months old. Has there been any improvement since then, say in version 4.0? ( the eval is only 3.5).
I am evaluating EA and have given the doc generation tools a real workout. I have found that the RTF templates really aren't templates. My biggest concern is that most of the text generated does not pass through an EA ## tag. The help is misleading and suggests a higher level of control.
For example, we have no control over the contents and layout of all the notes attached to a class, use case, requirement etc. As these notes form a large part of requirement documentation, we would have little control over the details generated.
Specically examples include:
1. We'd like to control the format of the <TYPE> definition. Eg. "public Actor: This actor is....". I'd like to remove or format the "public Actor:" part of this text.
2. We'd like to reduce the number of blank lines to improve readbaility
3. We'd like to include other prefexes and qualifiers - like the requirement priority, difficulty etc.
4. We'd like to control the detail/formating of the headings like "Scenarios", "Tags" etc. Currently these come across as Normal text with custom hardcoded formating. We'd prefer they are tagged in ##'s so we can control this.
In case any one else is listening ....
Requirements around RTF templates that I'd like to see in order of priority:
1. every item of text to pass through an EA ## RTF tag definition
2. structured notes - SGML or similar that can be massaged into RTF of HTML. So we can implement numbered lists, bullets (and tables as a stretch)
3. ability to rename RTF templates
4. Help file on RTF tags
5. Help file on EA specific RTF placeholder (the ## thingos)
6. Fix errors in RTF assembly. In testing the doc generation facilities, I found it was not assembling the RTF correctly - e.g.
a) it puts lots of table ends end where it doesn't need to
b) The requirement tag doesn't apply to requirements but to scenarios.
These are significant flaws for us. The key output for us is documents and it is proving hard to convince senior management that the tool is worth the commitment because it doesn't have the control we need on the detail included in our specifications. We are also concerned about the level of other problems we find in the documentation generation tools if we became expert users.
The existing documentation features are very promising but are let down by the RTF control. Unfortunately, there's quite a few tools and affordable pricepoints these days. So I'm not convinved EA is the tool of choice yet is your primary interest is in specification writing and reverse engineer as built designs (we don't want to do the round-trip engineering thing).
Overall though, congrats on a nice product.
Cheers,
Pete.
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