Notes

Overview

Each model element can be documented by one or more notes or associated text zones. A note has:

· a name which is chosen from a list of possible names, according to the kind of element concerned. For example, a class can have note names like "description" or "summary". The name indicates the purpose of the entered note.

· a content, which is text freely entered by the user. Its nature must correspond to its purpose. For example, a "summary" note contains a review of the element.

Note: New note types can be defined using MDA Modeler.

Example

Figure 13. Entering a note for a class

Steps:

1. Select the "Notes" tab in the element's dialog box.

2. Click on "Add".

3. Choose the type of note from the combobox.

4. Enter the content.

5. Confirm.

"Description" and "Summary" notes

Most document templates use these two note types:

· summary notes, which contain a short summary of the element, in less than a line, often used in numbered lists

· description notes, which contain the complete description of an element.

If you want to provide a detailed description of an element, you can enter both a "summary" note and a "description" note on the selected element.

Note: Description and summary notes can be entered either via the "Auxiliary properties" tab or the "Documentation" tab of the auxiliary window. All other kinds of notes can be created via the "Auxiliary properties" tab. For more details, please see "Creating notes and tagged values".

Example of description and summary notes

Here is an example of a typical document template that uses these two notes.

Chapter 2 : package S1

Chapter 2.1 : overview

< summary S1 > < description S1 >

classes of the package :

C1 : < summary C1 >

C2 : < summary C2 >

Chapter 2.2 : Class C1

< summary C1 > < description C1 >

Chapter 2.3 : Class C2

< summary C2 > < description C2 >

Characters generating bulleted lists

In order to generate bulleted lists in your documentation, certain characters are used within notes. These characters are specified at MDAC parameter level (for more information, please see "Documentation configuration parameters").

Let's imagine we had defined "*" as being a character used in the generation of bulleted lists. Figure 14 shows both the note containing these characters, and the result in the generated documentation.

Figure 14. Generating a bulleted list