Cheap Production of Japanese Documents,an Experiment in Programming Methodology,

摘要

This paper describes a small experiment in programming methodology. The problem is the production of Japanese documents in a given environment. The assumed environment is that of the Department of Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU). The experiment is done by a one-man team consisting of the author. The process involves four factors: (1) preparing data, (2) finding the properties of the computing environment, (3) designing the user interface, and (4) actually writing a program. The program, written in Snobol 4, accepts a sort of romanized Japanese. The output, printed on the Xerox Graphics Printer of CMU, makes mixed use of the hirakana and the katakana characters, but the kanji (Chinese characters) is excluded. At the focus of attention is how the general shape of the software is determined, i.e., requirement analysis in the broad sense. The first half of this paper also serves as a user's manual of the product.