Documentation generators

Save time documenting your source code or application. There are a huge number of documentation generators that can save you huge amounts of time when creating documentation for your software or project.

If developing software then there are a wide range of documentation generators for documenting application source code. The latest programming languages such as Java (JavaDoc) and the .NET Framework (XML Comments in VB.NET and C#) have official code documentation standards that make it easy to write inline software documentation that is fully integrated with the application source code. A documentation generator utility can then extract all of the code comments from the source code and create a nicely formatted document from these comments.

Documentation generators can save a huge amount of time compared to compiling source code documentation by hand. The other great thing is that by keeping the source code documentation within the source code itself, it means that application developers themselves can update their own software documentation. It also means that the code documentation is always fully up to date with the application itself.

Documentation generators are also available for creating end user documentation. The simplest tool available for creating end user documentation for Windows based applications is Microsoft's free HTML Help Workshop. This compiles HTML files into a single, searchable and cross-referenced Help File. While good for simple applications, it would struggle with more complex software applications.