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 stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs. Note that many of the generators listed are no longer maintained.
Basic general information about the generators, including: creator or company, license, and price.
More information Name, Creator ...
| Name | Creator | Input format | Languages (alphabet order) | OS support | First public release date | Latest stable version | Software license |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ddoc | Walter Bright | Text | D | Windows, OS X, Linux and BSD | 2005/09/19 | DMD 2.078.3 | Boost |
| Document! X | Innovasys | Text, Binary | C++/CLI only, C#, IDL, Java, VB, VBScript, PL/SQL | Windows only | 1998 | 2014.1 | Proprietary |
| Doxygen | Dimitri van Heesch | Text | C/C++, C#, D, IDL, Fortran, Java, PHP, Python | Any | 1997/10/26 | 1.9.1 | GPL |
| Epydoc | Edward Loper | Text | Python | Any | 2002/01/— | 3.0 (2008) | MIT |
| fpdoc (Free Pascal Documentation Generator) | Sebastian Guenther and Free Pascal Core | Text | (Object)Pascal/Delphi | FPC tier 1 targets | 2005 | 3.2.2 | GPL reusable parts are GPL with static linking exception |
| Haddock | Simon Marlow | Text | Haskell | Any | 2002 | 2.15.0 (2014) | BSD |
| HeaderDoc | 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) | APSL |
| Imagix 4D | Imagix Corp. | Text | C, C++, Java | Windows, Linux, Unix | 1995 | 7.3 | Proprietary |
| Javadoc | Sun Microsystems | Text | Java | Any | 1995 | 1.6 | GPL |
| JSDoc | Michael Mathews | Text | JavaScript | Any | 2001/07/— | 1.10.2 | GPL |
| JsDoc Toolkit | Michael Mathews | Text | JavaScript | Any | 2007? | 2.0.0 | MIT |
| mkd | Jean-Paul Louyot | Text | Any with comments | Unix, Linux, Windows | 1989 | 2015 | EUPL GPL |
| MkDocs | Tom Christie | Text | Python | Any | 2014/10/29 | 1.5.3 | BSD |
| Natural Docs | Greg Valure | Text | Any with comments | Any | 2003/05/26 | 2.0.2 | GPL |
| NDoc | Jason Diamond, Jean-Claude Manoli, Kral Ferch | Binary | C# | Windows only | 2003/07/27 | 1.3.1 | GPL |
| pdoc | Andrew Gallant | Text | Python | Any | 2013 | 1.0.1 (2021) | Unlicense |
| perldoc | Larry Wall | Text | Perl | Any | 1994 | 5.16.3 | Artistic, GPL |
| phpDocumentor | Joshua Eichorn | Text | PHP | Any | 2000 | 3.0.0 | LGPL for 1.x, MIT for 2+ |
| pydoc | Ka-Ping Yee[1] | Text | Python | Any | 2000 | in Python core | Python |
| RDoc | Dave Thomas | Text | C, C++, Ruby | Any | 2001/12/14 | in Ruby core | Ruby |
| ROBODoc | Frans Slothouber | Text | Any with comments | Any | 1995/01/19 | 4.99.36 (2015) | GPL |
| Sandcastle | Microsoft | Text | .NET | Windows only | 2008/05/— | 2.4.10520 (2016) | Ms-PL |
| Sphinx | Georg Brandl | Text | Ada, C, C++, Fortran, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby | Any | 2008/03/21 | 3.5.4 | BSD |
| Visual Expert | Novalys | Text, Binary | C#, PL/SQL, Transact-SQL, PowerBuilder | Windows only | 1995 | 2017 | Proprietary |
| VSdocman | Helixoft | Text | VB, VBScript, C# | Windows only | 2003 Oct 2 | 9.0 | Proprietary |
| YARD | Loren Segal | Text | Ruby | Any | 2007/02/24 | 0.7.3 | MIT |
| Name | Creator | Input format | Languages (alphabet order) | OS support | First public release date | Latest stable version | Software license |
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The output formats the generators can write.
More information HTML, CHM ...
| HTML | CHM | RTF | LaTeX | PostScript | man pages | DocBook | XML | ePub | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ddoc | Yes | Yes[lower-alpha 1] | No | Yes[lower-alpha 1] | Yes[lower-alpha 1] | Yes[lower-alpha 1] | Yes[lower-alpha 1] | No | Yes[lower-alpha 1] | |
| Document! X | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | |
| Doxygen | Yes | Yes | Yes | Indirectly[lower-alpha 2] | Yes | Indirectly[lower-alpha 2] | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Epydoc | Yes | No | No | Yes | Indirectly[lower-alpha 3] | Indirectly[lower-alpha 3] | No | No | No | |
| fpdoc | Yes | Native | Yes | Indirectly[lower-alpha 3] | Indirectly[lower-alpha 3] | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Haddock | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Partial | No | |
| HeaderDoc | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |
| Imagix 4D | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | |
| Javadoc | Yes | Indirectly[lower-alpha 4] | Indirectly[lower-alpha 4] | Indirectly[lower-alpha 4] | Indirectly[lower-alpha 4] | Indirectly[lower-alpha 4] | Indirectly[lower-alpha 4] | Indirectly[lower-alpha 4] | Indirectly[lower-alpha 4] | |
| JSDoc | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | |
| JsDoc Toolkit | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes+JSON | |
| MkDocs | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Natural Docs | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | |
| NDoc | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | |
| pdoc | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| phpDocumentor | Yes | Yes (1.x only) | No | Yes (1.x only) | No | No | No | Yes (1.x only) | Yes (1.x only) | |
| pydoc | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| RDoc | Yes | Yes[lower-alpha 5] | No | No | No | No | Indirectly[lower-alpha 6] | No | Yes[lower-alpha 5] | |
| ROBODoc | Yes | Indirectly | Yes | Indirectly[lower-alpha 3] | Yes | Indirectly[lower-alpha 3] | Yes | Yes | No | |
| Sandcastle | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | |
| Sphinx | Yes | Yes | Indirectly[lower-alpha 7] | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||
| Visual Expert | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | |
| VSdocman | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | No | No | Yes | |
| YARD | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | |
| HTML | CHM | RTF | LaTeX | PostScript | man pages | DocBook | XML | ePub |
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More information possibility of extended customization, generated diagrams ...
| possibility of extended customization | generated diagrams | highlighting and linking of generated doc | parameter types extracted | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ddoc | with macros | |||
| Document! X | customizable HTML based templates, custom comment tags | linked graphical object relationship diagrams | internal links and links to .NET framework documentation | types extracted and linked |
| Doxygen | with XSLT | caller and callee graphs, dependency graphs, inheritance diagrams, collaboration diagrams | ||
| Epydoc | ||||
| Haddock | Yes | Yes | ||
| HeaderDoc | 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. | |
| Imagix 4D | 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 |
| Javadoc | ||||
| JSDoc | Yes | |||
| JsDoc Toolkit | Yes | |||
| mkd | 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 |
| MkDocs | ||||
| Natural Docs | ||||
| NDoc | ||||
| perldoc | Extend the generator classes through Perl programming. | Only linking | ||
| pdoc | overridable Jinja2 templates | source code syntax highlighting, automatic cross-linking to symbol declarations | Yes | |
| phpDocumentor | Smarty-based templates (1.x), Twig-based templates (2+) | class inheritance diagrams | cross reference to generated documentation, and to php.net function reference | Yes |
| pydoc | ||||
| RDoc | ||||
| ROBODoc | ||||
| Sphinx | 10 themes; Jinja2 templating; Python plugins | several in sphinx-contrib, e.g. using aafigure, actdiag, Google Chart, or gnuplot | Table of Contents, Index; cross referencing; syntax highlighting with Pygments | custom objects (such as functions and classes) |
| Visual Expert | documentation content and styles customizable | Class inheritance, call trees, dependencies (impact analysis) | internal links between classes, methods, variables, tables, columns... | all types extracted |
| VSdocman | 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 |
| YARD | customizable Ruby templates | class diagrams with extra tool | internal classes/modules cross-referenced and Ruby source highlighted |
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- "Doxygen Manual: Output Formats". Archived from the original on 2013-01-06.