Automatic documentation: call for help with C++

Hi folks A possible new approach to generating automatic documentation from source code - but it will require someone with good C++ skills to evaluate it... One of the weaknesses of PHP is that it lacks a built-in Javadoc style system for generating automatic documentation in HTML and other formats direct from the source code. On larger projects, this could obviously save very substantial amounts of time. There are a number of approaches to solving this for PHP - either clones of Javadoc written in PHP, or an interface to Javadoc itself. See the article and comments at: http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/stefano20000824.php3 The problem is, to my eye at least, that the Javadoc style of markup is intrusive and reduces the readability of the code. And the php imlementations are still incomplete with pretty basic feature sets. A possible alternative: the programmers at CERN (the guys who invented the WWW) have a free, high-end data processing framework called ROOT, and this includes a documentatation generation component. You can find it at: http://root.cern.ch/root/ With the documentation specific stuff at: http://root.cern.ch/root/Documentation.html There are binaries for most platforms, and the source code is there too. This is seriously cool software, but the interface is in C++. I suspect that using this tool anyone with C++ skills could quickly develop a leading edge documentation engine for PHP that would more than match the alternatives in PERL and Java (it generates very impressive diagrams of class trees, for a start). A full featured, native documentation engine would surely help to establish PHP as a serious corporate tool (anyone at Zend interested??) and would be a great utility for any larger project. Unfortunately, I am merely a PHP hacker with no background in C. If anyone with C++ skills is interested, it would be great if they could check out the potential of ROOT at Cern, and report back to the list. If it looks promising, and someone was prepared to take it on, perhaps we could have a discussion about the markup format that should be employed. Ideally, the interface would allow the user to select from a range of markup styles, rather than impose a style on all users... Any takers? Geoff Caplan Caplan Associates 33 Pytchley House Brown's Green Birmingham B20 1DN United Kingdom Voice: (+44) 0121-515 1154 mailto:geoff@productivity.co.uk