PDL/81 Capabilities

All the capabilities of PDL/81, both for software designs and for conventional documents, are listed here.

For Software Design Documents

• PDL/81 automatically generates design documents with the following components:
  • Cover Page
  • Table of Contents
  • Flow Segments
  • Data Segments
  • Text Segments
  • External Segments
  • Segment Reference Trees
  • Data Index
  • Flow Segment Index
• Flow segments are automatically formatted based on the use of PDL keywords, helping to show the flow of the design clearly.
• All references (or calls) within a flow segment to other flow segments are detected and indicated.
• Segment reference trees illustrate, by using indented tables, the relationships between all the flow segments of a design.
• A data item index lists the data items used in the design and shows where each is used.
• a flow segment index lists the flow segments of the design and shows where each is used.
• Additional keywords can be added easily, and the user has complete control over the type of highlight (if any) used for the keywords.
• The cyclomatic complexity of each segment may be measured and reported. The complexity is printed on each flow segment page and in the flow segment index. If a segment's complexity exceeds some specified value, a warning will be printed, and all such segments will be listed in an index of overly complex segments.
• Automatic requirements tracking may be used to indicate which flow segments address (or are associated with) which paragraphs of the controlling requirements specification. When used with DOD-STD 2167A, this might be the Software Requirements Specification, DI-MCR-80025. References are displayed with each flow segment and summarized in an optional requirements index.
• Consistency checking is provided in the form of an optional calls-in-context report. This groups together all the calls to a particular flow segment and flag those which appear to be inconsistent.
• Syntax checking of the use of keywords may be performed and errors reported.
• Both a PDL design and the resulting code may be maintained in the source file. Code is held in code segments which can be printed in the design document interleaved with the corresponding flow segments.
• An Ada Design Style is provided for designs that need to b implemented in the Ada programming language.

For Conventional Documents

• In addition to software design documents, other document styler are distributed with PDL/81 for producing conventional documents. These are manual, a style for formatting manuals and reports; text, a style for formatting general text; letter; and memo.
• These styles provide features including:
  • Automatically filled and justified text.
  • Multi-level major and minor headings with automatically generated numbers.
  • Automatically formatted lists of various kinds including both enumerated and itemized lists.
  • Automatically generated table of contents with control over the level of detail displayed.
  • Automatically generated document index.
  • Formatting of figures and tables with automatically assigned numbers and generations of a list of tables and a list of figures.
  • Cross-referencing between parts of a document with references automatically updated as the document changes.
• Document styles are governed by style files, one of which is selected when PDL/81 is invoked. Style files can be modified, and entirely new styles created. Simple modifications are accomplished by editing the distributed style files. For extensive modifications and creating new styles, the Format Design Language is available.
• For classified documents, Automatic Portion Marking is provided in accordance with the Industrial Security Manual.
• A special man2167 style is provided for formatting documents which abide by the guidelines of DOD-STD-2167A, Defense System Software Development, and MIL-STD-490A, Specification Practices. This is particularly useful for producing documents specified in Data Item Descriptions DI-MCCR-8009 through DI-MCCR-8032.

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