[fpc-pascal] Documentation

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

On 18/12/12 01:25, luciano de souza wrote:
> But my question is: FPDoc can be used without
> an IDE?

Yes, fpdoc is a command line tool, just the fpc (The free pascal compiler).

Some get confused between the fpdoc program, and the FPDoc Editor
(add-on) included within Lazarus IDE. The latter is used to edit the XML
description files (documentation).


> If true, would I have to create the XML structure manually?

I always write my XML description files with a text editor, simply
because there exists no editor application that supports everything
fpdoc syntax does. Also the fpdoc XML syntax is rather simple. I use
MSEide as my editor of choice for documentation - due to much better
code templates support. I have setup quite a few fpdoc code templates in
MSEide, which speeds up my writing of fpdoc xml syntax. That way I can
rather concentrate on writing the documentation and not the XML tags (or
fighting with some documentation editor tool).


> Pasdoc is a very good tool, but that's true the source code becomes overcrowded.

It is very clear that it is a personal preference. There is no right or
wrong. Some like inline documentation, others like external
documentation. I like complete and detailed documentation, not just
one-liners. So External Documentation files is the only way for me,
otherwise I will never be able to read my object pascal source code.
Plus, using fpdoc, I can generate PDF, INF, CHM and HTML output from the
same XML description files.


Regards,
  - Graeme -

-- 
fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://fpgui.sourceforge.net/