Hi David,

what's badly missing in "modern" IDEs is the possibility to write  
integrated documentation in form of stories. Having just a 1:n  
correspondence between system category and classes, message category and  
methods, is [in non-trivial cases] insufficient for describing "why and  
how this works" and "what, in terms of entities, is this *all* about" and  
moreover to ask for "what parts of the system have no integrated  
documentation".

I'd like to be able to drag'n'drop links to "browser accessible objects",  
into an integrated document and write a story "around" the links.

Classes, variables, categories, messages, statements, literals, all should  
be accessible by such link.

With integrated I mean, at minimum, that when browsing for senders,  
implementors, variables and other references, then the result list must  
also turn up the integrated documentation (which containes the links as  
described).

Another aspect of the integrated documentation is that it can (must!)  
outdate when, for example, things are renamed or deleted. Imagine a doIt  
for "browse outdated documentation" ;-)

I hope the above was clear; if not then I'd be happy to respond to  
questions and critique.

For the empirical case study: count me in, I'm used to be electronically  
investigated :)

/Klaus

On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 20:31:55 +0100, David wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm currently doing a PhD under the supervision of Stephane Ducasse and  
> Oscar Nierstrasz at the university of Bern, Switzerland. My main  
> research interests are in the context of Integrated Development  
> Environments (IDEs). I'm planning to work on the Squeak IDE to see how  
> the IDE of a dynamic object-oriented programming language can be  
> improved and extended.
> Especially, I want to experiment with different metaphors
...
> For me it is important to know if I can motivate enough people to do a  
> serious empirical study.
...
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Kind regards,
> David
>
>
>