Comparison of documentation generators

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of documentation generators. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. This article is not all-inclusive or necessarily up-to-date. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.

General information

Basic general information about the generators: creator/company, license/price etc.

	Creator	First public release date	Latest stable version	Cost (USD)	Software license
classdoc	Jens Gulden	2001	1.0	Free	GPL
CppDoc	Richard Feit	November 23, 1998	2.3.1	Free	Proprietary
Doxygen	Dimitri van Heesch	1997	1.4.3	Free	GPL
Javadoc	Sun Microsystems	?	1.5	Free (Part of the Java 2 SDK)	Proprietary
KDOC	Sirtaj Singh Kang	1999	3.0.1	Free	?
Natural Docs	Greg Valure	May 26, 2003	1.35	Free	GPL
NDoc	?	July 27, 2003	1.3.1	Free	GPL
ROBODoc	Frans Slothouber	January 19, 1995	4.99.8	Free	GPL
VBDOX	Mihayl Stamenov	October 26, 2001	1.4.3	Free	GPL
	Creator	First public release date	Latest stable version	Cost (USD)	Software license

Operating system support

The operating systems the generators can run on.

	Windows	Mac OS X	Linux	BSD	Unix
classdoc	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
CppDoc	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
Doxygen	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Javadoc	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
KDOC	Partial	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Natural Docs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
NDoc	Yes	No	No	No	No
ROBODoc	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
VBDOX	Yes	No	No	No	No
	Windows	Mac OS X	Linux	BSD	Unix

Language support

The programming languages the generators recognize.

	C/C++	Java	JavaScript	C#	D	PHP	Perl	Ruby	Python	IDL	.NET1
classdoc	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
CppDoc	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Doxygen	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	No
Javadoc	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
KDOC	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No
Natural Docs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
NDoc	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
ROBODoc	Yes2										No
	C/C++	Java	JavaScript	C#	D	PHP	Perl	Ruby	Python	IDL	.NET

Note (1): .NET is not a programming language, but is listed here for convenience.

Note (2): ROBODoc works with any language that supports remarks.

Input formats

The input formats the generators can read.

	Text	Binary
classdoc	No	Yes
CppDoc	Yes	No
Doxygen	Yes	No
Javadoc	Yes	No
KDOC	Yes	No
Natural Docs	Yes	No
NDoc	No	Yes
ROBODoc	Yes	No
VBDOX	Yes	No
	Text	Binary

Output formats

The output formats the generators can write.

	HTML	CHM	RTF	PDF	LaTeX	PostScript	man pages	DocBook
classdoc	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
CppDoc	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Doxygen	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Javadoc	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
KDOC	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
Natural Docs	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No	No
NDoc	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
ROBODoc	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
VBDOX	Yes	bgcolor="#ddffdd" Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
	HTML	CHM	RTF	PDF	LaTeX	PostScript	man pages	DocBook

See also

• List of documentation generators