Hi Jeffery,
Anyone know of or use any modern specification writing software geared
towards engineering and software? Something that covers many facets of
the design process, visualization, and possibly integration with other
software?
What *specifically* do you want the tool to do for you
(beside "write the code"/"design the circuit" :> )?
I'm really looking for something similar to the Visual Paradigm suite
but geared for electronic and programming specifications.
What is absent from *their* tools that you require? (Have you
run your requirement across *their* desk to see what they think
might fit your needs?)
I write a *lot* of specs (at times, almost half of my workload) and,
so far, have found good DTP tools (and portable document formats to
allow others to review and comment on the work-in-progress) the most
effective. Over the years I've had to home-grow various tools to
interface to those documents (an "open" format is essential, IMO)
but most have been relatively trivial to implement.
Also, avoid "importing" too many different "document" (whatever those
might be) formats as that just increases your exposure to changes in
those formats, the "foreign" tools that are writing them and *your*
tool reading them (nothing worse than having to rush to convert an
updated document from FOO format to BAR format just because it
tickled a bug in the FOO-format reader!)
