A Task Editor for the Discovery Method - User Guide
Running The Program
You will need to have the latest version of the Java Runtime Environment installed on your machine.
No installation is needed.
To run the program, simply double-click on the DiscoveryEditor.jar file.
Getting Started
On first launch, the program will ask you to select a workspace directory. This will be the directory where all of your projects
are saved. If you don't select a workspace directory now, a default directory will be created in the directory where the .jar file is placed.
You can change the workspace directory at any time by selecting the 'Set Workspace...' option on the Tools menu.
Next you will need to create a new project. Click on the File menu, and select the 'New Project...' option. You will be asked to enter a
project name, and then a directory with this name will be created in the workspace directory. This is where the data for this project will
be saved, so it is important that you do not delete it! The diagram drawing panel should appear, and you are now ready to start creating
diagrams!
Drawing Diagrams
You will now see the Task Structure drawing area. On the right is the palette. Click on the 'task' button. Below the palette buttons a list
will appear. At the moment it will contain only a 'New Task...' option, but after you have created some tasks they will all appear in this
list. Now click on the drawing area. A new task will appear, and you will be asked to name it. You can draw tasks, actors and objects in
this way. After you have drawn a few diagram components, select the 'Connection' button. You will notice that if you hover the mouse over
a component on the drawing canvas now it will become highlighted. Click on a task and it will stay highlighted. Now click on another
task, and a connection will be created between them.
Once you have created a few tasks and connections, click on the 'Arrange Diagram' button on the toolbar, indicated by a set-square icon.
This should neatly arrange your diagram. Right-click on a component and you will see a pop-up menu. You can change the root task of the
diagram by right-clicking on a task and selecting the 'Set As Root' option. If the task has a parent task, you can view it by clicking the
'Up-One-Level' button on the toolbar, indicated by an up arrow.
You can view the narrative diagram for a task by clicking on the Narrative tab on the top-left of the drawing canvas. To view a certain task's
narrative, set it as the root and then click on the Narrative tab. You will now see the narrative for the task. The narrative can be altered
by typing in the text boxes. Once you have finished editing, click the 'save' button on the palette to commit the changes to the repository.
Narratives can be popped-up or pushed-down using the buttons on the palette.
Unfortunately the task flow diagram editor isn't yet complete, but simple flow diagrams can be created by clicking on the Task Flow tab. All
diagrams can be exported to an image file by clicking on the 'Export' button on the toolbar, labelled with a picture icon. This will ask you
to enter a filename and directory to save the image to. The image will automatically be saved as a .jpg file. Alternatively, the diagram can
be printed using the Print button.