Re: Software documentation...



Randy Howard wrote:
Chuck F. wrote:
Randy Howard wrote:
jacob navia wrote:

NO, it is necessary to know what that dammed function DOES
and that will never be written by doxygen or similar
tools.

All of this thread is OT here, but from the above it appears you haven't spent very long (if any) with doxygen. It *can* be used to generate useful documentation. To do so, you simply add comments formatted correctly for its consumption, and out comes what amounts to detailed man pages.

As far as I am concerned things like doxygen are simply a means of maintaining documentation in the same source file as the code.

Correct. It is easier to keep the docs in sync with the code when they are side by side, but still not foolproof.


This can negatively affect the understandability of the docs,
especially if the actual code is poorly structured.

Even in 2006, there is still no cure for poorly structured code. Oh well...

There is no magic involved.

Was magic implied?

I think some people are expecting to take their source file, as it stands, feed it into doxygen or the like, and receive an impressive and accurate documentation file. That may require several wands.


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