NDLI: Estimating understandability of software documents

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Laitinen, Kari
Abstract	Software developers and maintainers need to read and understand source programs and other kinds of software documents in their work. Understandability of software documents is thus important. This paper introduces a method for estimating the understandability of software documents. The method is based on a language theory according to which every software document is considered to contain a language of its own, which is a set of symbols. The understandability of documents written according to different documentation practices can be compared using the rules of the language theory. The method and the language theory are presented by using source programs with different naming styles as example documents. The method can, at least theoretically, be applied to any kind of document. It can also be used to explain the benefits of some well-known software design methods.
Starting Page	81
Ending Page	92
Page Count	12
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01635948
DOI	10.1145/232069.232092
Journal	ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes (SOEN)
Volume Number	21
Issue Number	4
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	1979-04-01
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

Estimating understandability of software documents