Quality control in software documentation based on measurement of text comprehension and text comprehensibility

摘要

The importance of software documentation and the effects of poor documentation in data processing are often underrated. Little research has been published that evaluates the quality of software documentation. The evaluation of textual attributes such as comprehensibility, readability, etc., has seen more studies and relatively sound results. Thus this paper exclusively handles textual documentation, whereby the methods are employed for the evaluation of software documentation. We first introduce the methods used in the measurement of text comprehensibility. Then RMS (Readability Measuring System), a tool developed by the author to support the measuring process, is presented. The third part of the paper presents empirical results and discusses the experience gained in the application of the RMS tool.