SketchLink: Linking Sketches and Diagrams to Source Code Artifacts

SketchLink

Abstract

Sketches and diagrams play an important role in the daily work of software developers. If they are archived, they are often detached from the source code they document, because there is no adequate tool support to assist developers in capturing, archiving, and retrieving sketches related to certain source code artifacts. We implemented SketchLink to increasing the value of sketches and diagrams created during software development by supporting developers in these tasks. Our prototype implementation provides a web application that employs the camera of smartphones and tablets to capture analog sketches, but can also be used on desktop computers to upload, for instance, computer-generated diagrams. We also implemented a plugin that embeds the links in Javadoc comments and visualizes them in situ in the source code editor as graphical icons for the IntelliJ Java IDE. Besides being a useful software documentation tool, SketchLink also enables developers to navigate through their source code using the linked sketches and diagrams.

Availability

We are currently preparing a user study with SketchLink and plan to release the tool afterwards. A demo video is available below.

External content
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Publications

Sebastian Baltes, Peter Schmitz, and Stephan Diehl: Linking Sketches and Diagrams to Source Code Artifacts. In: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE'14 Research Demos).
Preprint

Sebastian Baltes and Stephan Diehl: Sketches and Diagrams in Practice. In: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE'14).
Preprint
Slides

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