javadoc for cobol does it exist? and where?

javadoc for cobol does it exist? and where?

Hi,

I am looking for a tool (free I would prefer) : a javadoc for cobol.
Does it exist?
I think it wouldn't be very hard to write it but I haven't too much time and
I don't feel up too much...

thank you for any information

best regards

Patrick

Post Follow-up to this message

Patrick Guibreteau
04-17-05 08:55 AM

Re: javadoc for cobol does it exist? and where?

> a javadoc for cobol. Does it exist?

There is no standard way of producing programmer documentation for
Cobol programs, no.

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Richard
04-17-05 08:55 AM

Re: javadoc for cobol does it exist? and where?

> You could in fact use javadoc.  IIRC it only preprocesses special
> comments that match its format --

No, it understands Classes and constructs documentation about
parameters and methods and _then_ includes specially marked comments.
I just ran it on a simple Class with no special comments and it
produced an 11Kb HTML file of documentation of how to use the class and
method and there were no special comments at all in the Class.

Of course this is documentation for a programmer. With Cobol systems I
find it more useful to add documentation into the program that is for
the end user.  This describes the business rules and how the input
affects the outputs.  This is extracted as HTML to form a set of web
pages that is the system documentation.

>  these could  be included in regular Cobol comments.

One has to be careful to separate the comments for the documentation
and code comments, including commented out code. I use markers *<html>
and *</html> to start and end extractable comments but it would be
better (from experience to have each line marked by, say, *+ in col 7
or *>+, to indicate each line separately.

Post Follow-up to this message

Richard
04-18-05 08:55 AM