documentation generator

{{Short description|Automation technology for creating software documentation}}

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In software development, a documentation generator is an automation technology that generates documentation. A generator is often used to generate API documentation which is generally for programmers or operational documents (such as a manual) for end users. A generator often pulls content from source, binary or log files.{{cite book |last1=Zhang |first1=Sai |last2=Zhang |first2=Cheng |last3=Ernst |first3=Michael |title=2011 26th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2011) |chapter=Automated documentation inference to explain failed tests |date=2011 |pages=63–72 |doi=10.1109/ASE.2011.6100145|isbn=978-1-4577-1639-3 |s2cid=14846118 |chapter-url=http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/mernst/pubs/test-documentation-ase2011.pdf }} Some generators, such as Javadoc and Doxygen, use special source code comments to drive content and formatting.