Automatic Generation of Task-oriented Help

S.Pangoli and F.Paterno',
CNUCE - CNR
Via S.Maria 36
56126 Pisa, Italy
Tel: +39 50 593289

E-mail: F.Paterno@cnuce.cnr.it

This work presents an approach to the design of the software component of an Interactive System, which supports the generation of automatic task-oriented help. Help can easily be generated from the abstract formal specification of the associated system without any further effort. The architectural description is obtained in a task-driven way, where tasks are specified by indicating temporal ordering constraints using operators of a concurrent formal notation. The association of user tasks with software interaction objects, which inherit constraints of related tasks, gives the information to structure task-oriented help in an immediate way. The help given is thus more expressive with a consequent improvement in the usability of an Interactive System.

KEYWORDS: Automatic help, task-driven design of architectures, development process for Interactive Systems software, formal notations.

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