The Three Golden Rules for Writing OpenOffice.org Specifications

Goal of this document:
These three rules shall assist specification authors writing specifications.

Intended readership:
Specification authors, specification reviewers (Development , Quality Assurance , User Experience, Documentation

Send Feedback to:
dev at specs dot openoffice dot org

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Each of the following rules [R] is accompanied by a couple of checklist questions. The optimum is to answer all of the questions with 'Yes'.

R1 [COMPLETE]:

First and foremost a specification has to be complete. That means all relevant aspects of a feature have been captured. When user interfaces (UI) are involved:

• Are the topics of the Accessibility Checklist covered?
• Are the topics of the Globalization Checklist covered?
• Are the topics of the Interface Text Style Guide checklist covered?
• Do alerts meet the requirements specified in the Alert Guidelines?
• Are all menu related changes specified in the Comprehensive OpenOffice.org Menu specification?
• Are all tool bar related changes specified in the Comprehensive OpenOffice.org Tool bar specification?
• Is each UI element specified in detail (e.g default values, input and output ranges, interactions and possible relations to other UI elements and parts of the UI)?
• Is the exception handling specified in detail?

R2 [CLEAR]:

• Each statement has to be unambiguously clear to Development , Quality Assurance, User Experience and Documentation.
• Is the specification in itself clear enough to the intended readership for being implemented, being tested and for being documented?

• Are you using quantifiable statements instead of interpretable generalities?
• Have you avoided to use terms like “more”, “most”, “less”, “easy”, “improve”, “enhanced”, “better”?
• Are you consistent within the specification and to specifications which relate to the feature you are specifying?

R3 [SIMPLE]:

• Each statement shall be as short and simple as possible.

Is any secondary writing regarding the detailed specification clearly separated e.g. “comments”, “notes”, “suggestions”, “ideas”, “reasons”?