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Comparison of documentation generators
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Summary
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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 stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs. Note that many of the generators listed are no longer maintained.
General information
Basic general information about the generators, including: creator or company, license, and price.
| Name | Creator | Input format | Languages (alphabet order) | OS support | First public release date | Latest stable version | Software license | Ddoc | docToolchain | Document! X | Doxygen | Epydoc | fpdoc (Free Pascal Documentation Generator) | Haddock | HeaderDoc | Imagix 4D | Javadoc | JSDoc | JsDoc Toolkit | mkd | MkDocs | Natural Docs | NDoc | pdoc | perldoc | phpDocumentor | pydoc | RDoc | ROBODoc | Sandcastle | Sphinx | Visual Expert | VSdocman | YARD | Name | Creator | Input format | Languages (alphabet order) | OS support | First public release date | Latest stable version | Software license |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Walter Bright | Text | D | Windows, OS X, Linux and BSD | 2005/09/19 | DMD 2.078.3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ralph D. Müller | Text | Java | Windows, OS X, Linux and BSD | 2018/08/31 | v3.4.2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Innovasys | Text, Binary | C++/CLI only, C#, IDL, Java, VB, VBScript, PL/SQL | Windows only | 1998 | 2014.1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dimitri van Heesch | Text | C/C++, C#, D, IDL, Fortran, Java, PHP, Python | Any | 1997/10/26 | 1.16.1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Edward Loper | Text | Python | Any | 2002/01/— | 3.0 (2008) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sebastian Guenther and Free Pascal Core | Text | (Object)Pascal/Delphi | FPC tier 1 targets | 2005 | 3.2.2 | reusable parts are GPL with static linking exception | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Simon Marlow | Text | Haskell | Any | 2002 | 2.15.0 (2014) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Apple Inc. | Text | AppleScript, Bash, Csh, C, C++, Delphi, IDL, Java, JavaScript, MIG, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Tcl | Any Unix-like | 2000/09/— | 8.9.28 (2013) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Imagix Corp. | Text | C, C++, Java | Windows, Linux, Unix | 1995 | 7.3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sun Microsystems | Text | Java | Any | 1995 | 1.6 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Michael Mathews | Text | JavaScript | Any | 2001/07/— | 1.10.2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Michael Mathews | Text | JavaScript | Any | 2007? | 2.0.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jean-Paul Louyot | Text | Any with comments | Unix, Linux, Windows | 1989 | 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tom Christie | Text | Python | Any | 2014/10/29 | 1.5.3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Greg Valure | Text | Any with comments | Any | 2003/05/26 | 2.0.2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jason Diamond, Jean-Claude Manoli, Kral Ferch | Binary | C# | Windows only | 2003/07/27 | 1.3.1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Andrew Gallant | Text | Python | Any | 2013 | 1.0.1 (2021) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Larry Wall | Text | Perl | Any | 1994 | 5.16.3 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Joshua Eichorn | Text | PHP | Any | 2000 | 3.0.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ka-Ping Yee | Text | Python | Any | 2000 | in Python core | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dave Thomas | Text | C, C++, Ruby | Any | 2001/12/14 | in Ruby core | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Frans Slothouber | Text | Any with comments | Any | 1995/01/19 | 4.99.36 (2015) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Microsoft | Text | .NET | Windows only | 2008/05/— | 2.4.10520 (2016) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Georg Brandl | Text | Ada, C, C++, Chapel, CMake, Fortran, GraphQL, JavaScript, Matlab, PHP, Python, reStructuredText, Ruby, Rust, VB | Any | 2008/03/21 | 8.2.1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Novalys | Text, Binary | C#, PL/SQL, Transact-SQL, PowerBuilder | Windows only | 1995 | 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Helixoft | Text | VB, VBScript, C# | Windows only | 2003 Oct 2 | 9.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Loren Segal | Text | Ruby | Any | 2007/02/24 | 0.7.3 |
Supported formats
The output formats the generators can write.
| Generator name | HTML | CHM | RTF | LaTeX | PostScript | man pages | DocBook | XML | EPUB | Ddoc | docToolchain | Document! X | Epydoc | fpdoc | Haddock | HeaderDoc | Imagix 4D | Javadoc | JSDoc | JsDoc Toolkit | MkDocs | Natural Docs | NDoc | pdoc | phpDocumentor | pydoc | RDoc | ROBODoc | Sandcastle | Sphinx | Visual Expert | VSdocman | YARD | Generator name | HTML | CHM | RTF | LaTeX | PostScript | man pages | DocBook | XML | EPUB | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indirectly | Indirectly | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Native | Indirectly | Indirectly | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Partial | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Indirectly | Indirectly | Indirectly | Indirectly | Indirectly | Indirectly | Indirectly | Indirectly | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| +JSON | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (1.x only) | (1.x only) | (1.x only) | (1.x only) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Indirectly | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Indirectly | Indirectly | Indirectly | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Indirectly |
Other features
| possibility of extended customization | generated diagrams | highlighting and linking of generated doc | parameter types extracted | Ddoc | docToolchain | Document! X | Doxygen | Epydoc | Haddock | HeaderDoc | Imagix 4D | Javadoc | JSDoc | JsDoc Toolkit | mkd | MkDocs | Natural Docs | NDoc | perldoc | pdoc | phpDocumentor | pydoc | RDoc | ROBODoc | Sphinx | Visual Expert | VSdocman | YARD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| with macros | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| customizable themes, custom tasks | many diagram plugins (plantUML, mermaid, ...) | automatic and manual references, table of contents, bibliography, ... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| customizable HTML based templates, custom comment tags | linked graphical object relationship diagrams | internal links and links to .NET framework documentation | types extracted and linked | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| with XSLT | caller and callee graphs, dependency graphs, inheritance diagrams, collaboration diagrams | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Custom headers, footers, code coloring, and other CSS styles in individual pages. Project-wide TOC is generated from a user-defined template. | Configurable syntax highlighting/coloring with automatic linking to symbols in declaration, ability to manually link to symbols in discussion, etc. | Provides warnings if tagged parameters do not match code, parsed parameters included in XML output and Doxygen-style tagfile (-D flag in 8.7). Partial C preprocessor support with -p flag. Support for #if/#ifdef control over documentation inclusion using the -D and -U command-line flags. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| customizable through style sheets and CSS | linked hierarchy and dependency graphs for function calls, variable sets and reads, class inheritance and interface, and file includes and interface, intra-function flow charts | fully cross-linked project-wide, including all hierarchy and dependency graphs, metrics tables, source code snippets, and source files | full semantic analysis of source code, including parameter types, conditional compilation directives, macro expansions | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Customisable for all type of comments | 'as-is' in comments | all general documentation; references, manual, organigrams, ... Including the binary codes included in the comments. | all coded comments | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Extend the generator classes through Perl programming. | Only linking | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| overridable Jinja2 templates | source code syntax highlighting, automatic cross-linking to symbol declarations | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Smarty-based templates (1.x), Twig-based templates (2+) | class inheritance diagrams | cross reference to generated documentation, and to php.net function reference | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Customizable themes (10 first-party); Jinja templating; Python plugins | class inheritance diagrams, graphviz, third party (e.g. using aafigure, actdiag, Google Chart, gnuplot, mermaid) | Automatic cross-referencing (including between projects), Index; Table of Contents, Syntax highlighting with Pygments | custom objects (such as functions and classes) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| documentation content and styles customizable | Class inheritance, call trees, dependencies (impact analysis) | internal links between classes, methods, variables, tables, columns... | all types extracted | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| full customization for all output formats, templates for MSDN-like output, custom XML comment tags | linked graphical class diagrams, class inheritance tree | internal links and links to .NET framework documentation | types extracted and linked | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| customizable Ruby templates | class diagrams with extra tool | internal classes/modules cross-referenced and Ruby source highlighted |
Notes
References
References
Wikipedia Source
This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.
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