Kai says: "HelpAndManual (http://www.helpandmanual.com/) is, in my opinion,
by far the best software available for creating any sort of documentation.
The software comes with a powerful editor that allows the user comfortably to edit all sorts of aspects of documentation, including
references, a glossary, an index and a table of contents as a tree-structure. The application saves its data in XML files.
The application compiles these files not only into ordinary Windows help files but also compiled help, RTF documents, PDF documents, web
sites and electronic books.
That fact that it saves its internal data in ordinary XML files means that any application could create such XML files itself and then
use HelpAndManual as a compiler in order to generate the preferred output format.
This seems to be particularly useful for classes: plenty of useful information can be generated from class scripts automatically: a list
of methods including their syntax as well as a list of properties and fields.
In the case where a class script contains information about itself following some simple and basic rules, these pieces of information can
be used as well.
This talk demonstrates how this can be achieved by using a couple of classes which are already available as part of the APLAPL project
on the APL Wiki (ADOC; see http://aplwiki.com/ADOC) or will become available shortly before the APL2010 conference: the APL2XML classes.
With these classes one can create XML files which will be accepted by HelpAndManual as input files. Before the APL2010 conference ADOC
will be enhanced to make use of the APL2XML classes in order to create any of the output formats supported by HelpAndManual.
Apart from its usefulness the approach demonstrates clearly the advantage of using XML as file format. This allows applications to work
together although they don't know much about each other.
The advantages of an object-oriented approach in software development also becomes apparent: Both ADOC as well as the APL2XML classes are
quite complex, but the complexity is hidden: the user is expected to deal only with the public interface which is easy and clean."