SmalltalkDoc is an on-going project to significantly improve the documentation of the VisualWorks Smalltalk language, components and IDE. It was initiated by Mark Roberts, in the Cincom VisualWorks group. SmalltalkDoc has evolved through two previews shipped with VisualWorks, but these only hint at what is planned.

SmalltalkDoc seeks to reduce the burden of producing documentation, to help automate the process of keeping it up to date, and to provide a facility that even experts (being Smalltalkers, after all) will find useful.

We need to begin with a description of SmalltalkDoc's intended audiences, the problems they face, and some of SmalltalkDoc's proposed solutions to those problems; in other words, the high-level use cases for SmalltalkDoc. Use cases for both the readers and writers of Smalltalk documentation need to be included.

The SmalltalkDoc use cases will each be published in this blog. I'd like to invite all past, present and future Smalltalkers to comment on each use case. If any further use cases are identified, I will separately publish them as blog items for further comment.

Disclosure: my involvement has been that of a part-time designer and programmer, working under contract from Cincom.