Software documentation can be structured in 1 of 2 formats, the reference manual and the user guide.
There are several ways to determine how to address their needs with your documentation.
In most cases, software users have little knowledge of computers outside of the applications they use. Understand the audience you're writing the documentation for. In these cases, follow the standards as to how much of the documentation should be included with the source code. NET Framework (Visual Basic.NET, C #), have their own standards for documenting code. Some programming languages, such as Java and the.This is a particular advantage for applications where the program logic is fragmented over many pages and includes a number of supplemental files, as with certain Web applications. If the source code is particularly lengthy, it can be documented in the form of a help file, which can be indexed or searched with keywords.At a minimum, documentation within the source code needs to explain the purpose of functions, subroutines, variables, and constants.
The more technical documentation is developed within the program's source code to begin with, the easier it will be to update and maintain along with the code, as well as to document various versions of the original application. Decide how much of the documentation should be within the program code and how much should be separate from it.