Re: javadoc

[Jeff Fitzgerald <fitzgera -at- universal -dot- ca>]

mary:

At 06:57 PM 9/7/99 -0400, Mary Reinhardt wrote:
>Has anyone had experience with creating javadoc? How much effort does
>this take?

	javadoc probably takes no effort at all on your part. the developers would
have to document every method in the classes you wanted to appear in the
documentation. from a dos prompt, you then type javadoc, providing it is in
your path. you should get a long list of options you can use to produce the
javadocs.

> What are the pros and cons of javadoc versus the traditional
>hardcopy/pdf/html documentation?

	depends on what your product is. if you're selling a bunch of java
packages, javadoc is a great way to go. most developers are just looking
for what the arguments and return types are for the class' methods. if
you're not selling an api, javadoc is of no use to you, but it might be for
other developers in your company.

> The developers on my project team are
>requesting the next release of documentation be done in javadoc. Any
>words of wisdom out there?
>
	its a great idea, providing you can get the developers to write the
documentation. i hope they don't expect you to wade through lines and lines
of source code to figure out what each method does.
	think about how hard it is to get them to answer your questions, and then
try to imagine how hard it would be to get them to write the documentation
themselves ;).
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Jeff Fitzgerald, B.A., M.A.
Tech Writer, Universal Systems Ltd.
E-mail: fitzgera -at- universal -dot- ca

"I does good words."
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