18. The system of claim 17 , further comprising a processor which implements the procedure preprocessor and the contextual reader.
17. A system for contextualizing operating procedures, comprising: a model of a device stored in memory, the model referring to a set of components of a physical device on which user actions are performable and which, for each of the components in the set, includes a state chart which links an action performable on the component with first and second states assumed by the component before and after the action is performed, wherein for at least some of the components, an operability constraint is stored, each operability constraint constraining the respective component to be in a first of its states before another of the components is able to change states from a first of its states to a second of its states; a procedure preprocessor configured for receiving a set of procedures, each procedure including text describing user actions which are to be performed on the physical device to implement the procedure and for each procedure, and segmenting the text into a sequence of instruction steps, each instruction step including an action to be performed on one of the components of the physical device that is referred to in the device model; and a contextual reader configured for receiving a request for one of the procedures, receiving device data from the physical device, contextualizing a current instruction step of the sequence of instruction steps for the requested procedure based on the device data and the state chart of the respective component that is referred to in the device model, and outputting a representation of the contextualized instruction step of the procedure to a display device, the contextualizing of the current instruction step including confirming, based on the device data, that the first component is in the first of its states before providing an instruction for an action to change the second component from the first of its states to the second of its states and, where the first component is not in the first of its states, adding an instruction to the sequence of instructions for performing an action which changes the first component from a second of its states to the first of its states.