Any tech writers interested in DITA should read Mariana Alupului’s, an Information Developer at IBM, article on DITADoclet. DITADoclet extracts developer comments and generates a complete set of DITA Java API reference files directly from the Java source code. It’s very detailed and shows how to run DITADoclet to generate the DITA Java API reference files, and use DITA Java API solution to document the references.

Mariana prefaces the tutorial by saying, “you will learn how to use DITADoclet, DITA Java API specialization, and the Eclipse IDE to create Java API reference documentation for easy distribution in many formats. DITADoclet generates the DITA Java API files, automatically creates the DITAMAP and MAPLIST files (DITA Java API specialization) for the Java API reference documentation, extracts the developer comments from the Java source code, and migrates the information to the generated DITA API files.”

She then adds that the Javadoc tool is used to generate Java API reference documentation from Java source code. The Javadoc tool generates the basic structure for the Java API reference documentation, but the documentation is often incomplete and limited to developer comments.

Changes to development teams appear to encourage removal of the API writers and editors from the Java API reference documentation process altogether. Developers have time to manage only Java source code files with incomplete comments. This situation clearly presents API writers and others who are interested in producing high quality API documentation with some substantial challenges.

Read the full article at: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-DITAdoclet/

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