ColdDoc 1.0 Alpha Released

When ColdDoc was first born, the original idea was to just output a port of Javadoc.  Looking into it further, I realised that the mechanics where there to generate any sort of documentation, not just a static HTML version of the API.

To that effect, ColdDoc has been refactored so that it is possible to generate documentation based on an arbitrary Template Strategy.  ColdDoc now ships with both a strategy that generates the port of JavaDoc and a strategy that generates UML via the UML2 Tools plugin in Eclipse, and plans are in the works to generate a PDF document strategy as well.

I won't take you through implementation details (there is new documentation for that), but you can still generate the static HTML API documentation based on JavaDoc, for which you can see an example here, but now it is done through the HTMLAPIStrategy. This also includes support for new ColdDoc based annotations, in which, for example, you can specify generic types for return/arguments types like array, struct etc, so you can finally answer that question in your documentation of "Yes, but what does that array contain?".

When working on the ColdSpring 2.0 rewrite (wow, that is long overdue for a blog post), I also really needed a way to generate UML diagrams from the code I was writing, as a basic attempt to be able to roundtrip from UML->CFC and then back again.  Also included within ColdDoc is a strategy to generate the XML that the Eclipse UML2 Tools Plugin uses to create UML diagrams from.  You can see a screenshot of a Class Diagram here that has been created with this combination of tools.

This is very useful, as it becomes very useful for collaboration and software design sessions, even when you have started with UML diagrams, as software designs can shift during implementation phases, and diagrams and documentation often fall by the wayside during these rapid change cycles.

If you are interested in more, or possibly developing your own documentation generation strategies, download a copy of ColdDoc, read the new documentation, and join the conversation on the google group.

Happy automation of documentation!