Domain-specific Authoring Tool

A domain-specific authoring tool is a type of specialist documentation platform that helps describe domain-specific artifacts with greater breadth and depth that would otherwise be possible using general-purpose developer portals or jack of all trades alternatives, let alone general-purpose documentation platforms.

The following is merely an illustrative list of domain-specific authoring tools:

• Business Process Modeling
  • Camunda
  • ProcessMaker
• Enterprise Architecture
  • ArchiMate
  • Bizzdesign
  • LeanIX
  • Sparx System’s Enterprise Architect
• UI/UX
  • Figma
  • InVision

DocOps Automation

Domain-specific authoring tools, in nearly all cases, do not see themselves as members of an overarching documentation system—so that their ultimate goal of augmenting an overarching body of knowledge. For example, they may not provide a command line flag (or REST API) to produce PNG or Markdown exports. As such, domain-specific authoring tools often require lower-level DocOps automation efforts.

Comparison with Systems of Facts

Systems of facts usually manage data that is of transactional or analytical, nature, or that is system-generated. They tend to produce different results every time they are queried. Instead, domain-specific authoring tools have a strong design-time bias and produce artifacts that are usually static, unless intentionally modified.

In most cases, the word ‘authoring’ conveys the notion that the result produced with the tool has a more personal, subjective nature.

Comparison with Image Sources

There is some overlap between nondescript image sources and domain-specific authoring tools. The key difference is that drawing programs do not have any particular domain in mind; that depends on the specific widgets chosen by the author. Instead, domain-specific authoring tools are narrowly focused on describing a specific artifact type. For example, while Microsoft Visio (an Image Source) may be used to design business process using the BPMN widgets, it’s unlike Camunda BPM, in which said ‘drawings’ must also be valid, executable processes.