The Path to Zen

My 2 Cents on The Future of Javadoc

Other than the survey I just filled out, some more thoughts on Amy Fowler’s Invitation.

• Keyword search: this would be extremely useful. I for one am willing to give up the HTML format in exchange for, e.g., WinHelp, for that functionality.
• The ability to make/create notes: just like JDocs but keep it to myself or my team (or my company, and so on)
• XML Output: perhaps the core javadoc engine can output standardized XML (similar to .Net but obviously more sophisticated). It’d be easier to postprocess the XML with XSLT than writing doclets on top of the Doclet API.
• Generate images for the class hierarchy charts.
• Sun should probably start considering granting appropriate rights to sites like JDocs, so they can host the core package javadoc just like they do others.
• This (and the one above) isn’t really technical improvement – I still think there ought to be annual awards like “Best Documented”, or more particularly in this case, “Best Javadoc’ed”.