| Software Documentation Generators can be used to create documentation
for software and other applications. Documentation Generators are largely divided into two
categories:
- Source Code Documentation Generators are used to document application source
code. Application
source code documentation generators are available for just about every programming
language available, including the .NET
Framework, ASP and C#. Modern programming languages such as
Java, Visual Basic.NET and C# all have defined source code commenting standards. These
commenting standards make it possible to for Documentation Generators to create high
quality API and other documentation from application source code. In the case of the
popular .NET Framework programming languages C# and VB.NET, Microsoft has defined an XML comments standard for documenting source
code written in these languages. Documentation Generators for .NET such as the .NET Documentation Tool can then extract
these code comments and incorporate them into the generated code documentation.
- Another use of Documentation Generator software is in the creation of end user
documentation. End user documentation is the documentation that shows how to
use the software application. Traditionally software end user documentation took the form
of a printed software manual. Now there are a much wider range of documentation formats to
supplement the printed manual. Software end user documentation is now typically made as
Adobe Acrobat PDFs, Intranet and Internet documentation, Windows Help Files, Wikis,
interactive CD-ROMs and DVDs and many other formats. A good Documentation Generator tool
for creating end user documentation will streamline the process of creating all these
different help formats by generating them all from a single documentation source.
Documentation
Generators can also be found for a variety of other uses. Documentation generators for
documenting databases such as SQL
Server and MySQL
are especially popular. |
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