In
software development
Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...
, a documentation generator is an
automation
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...
technology that generates
documentation
Documentation is any communicable material that is used to describe, explain or instruct regarding some attributes of an object, system or procedure, such as its parts, assembly, installation, maintenance, and use. As a form of knowledge managem ...
. A generator is often used to generate
API documentation which is generally for
programmers
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming.
The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a program ...
or operational documents (such as a manual) for
end user
In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrato ...
s. A generator often pulls content from
source,
binary
Binary may refer to:
Science and technology Mathematics
* Binary number, a representation of numbers using only two values (0 and 1) for each digit
* Binary function, a function that takes two arguments
* Binary operation, a mathematical op ...
or
log
Log most often refers to:
* Trunk (botany), the stem and main wooden axis of a tree, called logs when cut
** Logging, cutting down trees for logs
** Firewood, logs used for fuel
** Lumber or timber, converted from wood logs
* Logarithm, in mathe ...
files.
Some generators, such as
Javadoc
Javadoc (also capitalized as JavaDoc or javadoc) is an API documentation generator for the Java programming language. Based on information in Java source code, Javadoc generates documentation formatted as HTML and other formats via extensions. ...
and
Doxygen
Doxygen ( ) is a documentation generator that works with many programming languages. It extracts information from specially-formatted source code comments and saves the information in one of various supported formats.
Doxygen supports static ...
, use special
source code comments to drive content and formatting.
See also
*
Comparison of documentation generators
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of documentation generators. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the s ...
*
Template processor
A template processor (also known as a template engine or template parser) is software designed to combine ''template''s with data (defined by a data model) to produce resulting documents or programs.
The language that the templates are writte ...
*
Static code analysis
In computer science, static program analysis (also known as static analysis or static simulation) is the analysis of computer programs performed without executing them, in contrast with dynamic program analysis, which is performed on programs duri ...
*
Literate programming
Literate programming (LP) is a programming paradigm introduced in 1984 by Donald Knuth in which a computer program is given as an explanation of how it works in a natural language, such as English, interspersed (embedded) with snippets of macr ...
*
Integrated development environment
An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...
References
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