Interconnecting documentation. Harnessing the different powers of current documentation tools in software development

Current software documentation tools (like text processors, email, documentation generators, reporting, configuration management, wikis) have different strengths in supporting the software engineering process. But one weakness they all have in common is their inability to combine the advantages of the various techniques. Integrating documentation with diverse origins would enhance the force of expression and compensate individual failings of the different techniques. In this paper, we present a new brand of documentation utilities - exemplified by the Dendrodoc-system - that overcomes current problems with documentation. By processing information at negligible cost that common tools ignore, our system represents an efficient way of improving software documentation.