User Documentation Overhaul

Background

At the Exec Meeting at ETH in 2010 the following was established, amongst other things: "It is clear that the current documentation would not support, say, an engineer in an automotive company to start using the tools without significant support." The effort to improve the documentation is now under way and will be coordinated by Düsseldorf.

After some brainstorming, we came up with the following goal of the project:

Minimize the access to an expert a user of Event-B/Rodin needs to be productive.

Approach

By talking to a number of Rodin users we found the following requirements:

1. Get a new user up to speed.
2. Find solutions to specific problems.
3. Find specific information.

Possible Solution and Current State of Documentation

The above can be achieved by:

1. Providing a Tutorial that covers the essential aspects of Event-B and Rodin.
2. Providing a FAQ for common problems and issues.
3. Providing a reference manual.

These three groups of documentation would be interlinked.

These three groups already exist as part of this wiki. This raises the question why the current documentation is not adequate. We believe that this is due to the following reasons, amongst others:

• The tutorial doesn't make clear what knowledge is expected when starting the tutorial.
• The tutorial could greatly benefit from screenshots and more detail.
• The tutorial misses elements that we would consider crucial in a tutorial, e.g. installation (both Rodin and Provers), or configuration of provers.
• The FAQ contains 17 questions, which covers only a fraction of "frequently asked questions".
• The reference manual seems fairly complete, but is hard to navigate (mixture of PDFs, links and wiki information, combined with information that is marked as outdated, etc.)

Last, every version of Rodin has its own help system, consisting of a "snapshot" of a subset of the wiki. A script transforms the content to the Eclipse Help System.

Versioning

The wiki always contains the latest version of the documentation. This presumably covers the latest version of Rodin. There is no easy way to browse an older version of the documentation online. However, this information is accessible through the Eclipse Help System of the corresponding Rodin Version.

Rodin Extensions

Extensions to Rodin will not be part of this effort (e.g. Decomposition). Such efforts will continue to be documented in the Rodin Wiki. However, we can include relevant references in the Rodin documentation. This is mainly due to the fact that we have limited resources and must focus.

Next Steps

We believe that the current approach - Tutorial, FAQ, Reference - is fundamentally a good one. However, there are a number of aspects that we would like to improve. This includes:

• Further validation of the approach: We already talked to a number of users to understand their problems with the documentation better. Please provide us with your feedback. There may be a better approach than what we presented here so far.
• Develop an approach to versioning: Past versions of the documentation should be accessible online as well.
• Improve the structure of the documentation: Granularity of documentation elements should be improved, Navigation should be made easier. Visual cues may be introduced (e.g. icons for "Tip", "Caution", etc.) that are used consistently throughout the documentation
• Improve the content of the documentation: Make sure content builds on top of each other, make sure no steps are omitted, use screenshots, etc.
• Find gaps in the documentation and fill them.
• Rethink the representation of the documentation. The current approach works, but doesn't result in a professional appearance.

Wish List

Please add your personal wishes in this section, one bullet point at a time.

If you have comments regarding this document, please discuss on the discussion page.

• Wishlist from ETH
• Report on Training Experience