path: root/doc/index.doc

/******************************************************************************
 *
 * 
 *
 * Copyright (C) 1997-2000 by Dimitri van Heesch.
 *
 * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
 * documentation under the terms of the GNU General Public License is hereby 
 * granted. No representations are made about the suitability of this software 
 * for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
 * See the GNU General Public License for more details.
 *
 * Documents produced by Doxygen are derivative works derived from the
 * input used in their production; they are not affected by this license.
 *
 */
/*! \page index 
\if logo_on
<center>
\htmlonly
<img align=center lowsrc="doxygen_logo_low.gif" src="doxygen_logo.gif" 
     width=634 height=197 alt="doxygen"><br>
Version: $(VERSION)
\endhtmlonly
</center>
\endif

<h2>Doxygen license</h2>
\addindex license
\addindex GPL

Copyright &copy; 1997-2000 by 
<a href="mailto:dimitri@stack.nl">Dimitri van Heesch</a>.<p>

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
documentation under the terms of the GNU General Public License is hereby 
granted. No representations are made about the suitability of this software 
for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
See the 
<a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">
GNU General Public License</a>
for more details.
<p>
Documents produced by Doxygen are derivative works derived from the
input used in their production; they are not affected by this license.

<h2>Introduction</h2>
Doxygen is a documentation system for C++, IDL 
(Corba, Microsoft and KDE-DCOP flavors) and C. 

It can help you in three ways:
<ol>
<li> It can generate an on-line documentation browser (in HTML) and/or an 
     off-line reference manual (in \f$\mbox{\LaTeX}\f$) from a set 
     of documented source files. 
     There is also support for generating output in RTF (MS-Word), 
     Postscript, hyperlinked PDF, compressed HTML, and Unix man pages.
     The documentation is extracted directly from the sources, which
     makes it much easier to keep the documentation consistent with the
     source code.
<li> Doxygen can be configured to extract the code structure 
     from undocumented source files. This can be very useful to quickly 
     find your way in large source distributions. 
     The relations between the various elements are be visualized
     by means of include dependency graphs, inheritance diagrams,
     and collaboration diagrams, which are all generated automatically.
<li> You can even `abuse' doxygen for creating normal documentation (as I did
     for this manual).
</ol>

Doxygen is developed under <a href="http://www.linux.org">Linux</a>, 
but is set-up to be highly portable. As a result, it runs on most 
other UNIX flavors as well. Furthermore, an executable for 
Windows 9x/NT is also available.

This manual is divided into two parts, each of which is divided into several 
sections.

The first part forms a user manual:
<ul>
<li>Section \ref install discusses how to 
      <a href="http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/download.html">download</a>, compile and install
                     doxygen for your platform.
<li>Section \ref starting tells you how to generate your first piece of 
                     documentation quickly. 
<li>Section \ref docblocks demonstrates the various ways that code can
                 be documented.
<li>Section \ref lists show various ways to create lists. 
<li>Section \ref grouping shows how to group things together. 
<li>Section \ref formulas shows how to insert formulas in the documentation.
<li>Section \ref diagrams describes the diagrams and graphs that doxygen can generate.
<li>Section \ref preprocessing explains how doxygen deals with macro definitions.
<li>Section \ref external explains how to let doxygen create links to externally generated documentation.
<li>Section \ref faq gives answers to frequently asked questions. 
<li>Section \ref trouble tells you what to do when you have problems.
</ul>

The second part forms a reference manual:

<ul>
<li>Section \ref features presents an overview of what Doxygen can do.
<li>Section \ref history shows what has changed during the development 
                 of Doxygen and what still has to be done.
<li>Section \ref doxygen_usage shows how to use the \c doxygen program.
<li>Section \ref doxytag_usage shows how to use the \c doxytag program.
<li>Section \ref doxysearch_usage shows how to use the \c doxysearch program. 
<li>Section \ref doxywizard_usage shows how to use the \c doxywizard program. 
<li>Section \ref installdox_usage shows how to use the \c installdox
                 script that is generated by Doxygen if you use tag files. 
<li>Section \ref output shows how to generate the various output formats
                 supported by Doxygen.
<li>Section \ref autolink shows how to put links to files, classes, 
                 and members in the documentation.
<li>Section \ref config shows how to fine-tune doxygen, so it 
              generates the documentation you want.
<li>Section \ref commands shows an overview of the special commands that can be 
              used within the documentation.
<li>Section \ref htmlcmds shows an overview of the HTML commands that
              can be used within the documentation.
<li>Section \ref langhowto explains how to add support for new
              output languages.
</ul>


<h2>Projects using doxygen</h2>

I have compiled a 
\htmlonly
<a href="http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/projects.html">list of projects</a> 
that use doxygen.
\endhtmlonly
\latexonly
list of projects that use doxygen (see {\tt http://www.stack.nl/$\sim$dimitri/doxygen/projects.html}).
\endlatexonly
If you know other projects, let me know and I'll add them. 

<h2>Future work</h2>
Although doxygen is used successfully by a lot of people already, 
there is always room for improvement. Therefore, I have compiled a 
\htmlonly
<a href="http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/todo.html">todo/wish list</a>
\endhtmlonly 
\latexonly
todo/wish list (see {\tt http://www.stack.nl/$\sim$dimitri/doxygen/todo.html})
\endlatexonly
of possible and/or requested enhancements. 

<h2>Acknowledgements</h2>
\addindex acknowledgements
Thanks go to:
<ul>
\addindex Doc++
<li>Malte Z&ouml;ckler and Roland Wunderling, authors of DOC++.
    The first version of Doxygen borrowed some code of an old version of DOC++. 
    Although I have rewritten practically all code since then, DOC++ has still 
    given me a good start in writing Doxygen.
<li>All people at Troll Tech, for creating a beautiful GUI Toolkit
    (which is very useful as a Windows/Unix platform abstraction layer :-)
<li>My brother <a href="http://www.stack.nl/~fidget/index.html">Frank</a>
    for rendering the logos.
<li>Harm van der Heijden for adding HTML help support.
<li>Parker Waerchter for adding the RTF output generator.
<li>Joerg Baumann, for adding conditional documentation blocks, 
    PDF links, and the configuration generator.
<li>Matthias Andree for providing a .spec script for building rpms from the
    sources.
<li>Tim Mensch for adding the todo command.
<li>Jens Breitenstein, Christophe Bordeaux, Samuel Hägglund, Xet Erixon, 
    Vlastimil Havran, Petr Prikryl, Ahmed Also Faisal, Alessandro Falappa, 
    Kenji Nagamatsu, Francisco Oltra Thennet, Olli Korhonen, 
    Boris Bralo, Nickolay Semyonov, and Grzegorz Kowal for providing 
    translations into various languages.
<li>
Arnt Gulbrandsen, 
Adam P. Jenkins, 
Frank van de Pol, 
Ulrich Quill, 
Karl Robillard, 
Frugal the Curious, 
Michael Figley, 
Eric Bos,
Barry Roberts, 
Mark Tigges, 
Jan Ekholm, 
Andre Johansen, 
Martin Franken,
Martin Hofmann, 
Ulrich Ring, 
Andy Guy, 
Ryan Mclean, 
Joseph Reklow, 
Morten Eriksen, 
Arthur Pope, 
Andreas Felber, 
Matthias Schwartz, 
Bj&ouml;rn Bon, 
Volker B&ouml;rchers,
Baruch Even,
Kor de Jong,
Thomas Eschenbacher,
Bert Scholten, 
Germar Morgenthaler,
Daniel Bellen,
Terry Brown, 
Anke Selig, 
David Aspinwall,
Hellmar Becker, 
Harald Krummeck, 
Christoph Koegl,
Martin Reinecke, 
Joseph Turian, 
Craig P Earls, 
Greg Sjaardema, 
Vlado Sironja,
Jens Schmidt,
Lutz Sammer, 
Robert Dale,
Ionutz Borcoman, 
Markus Noga,
Darren Kelly, 
Joerg Ott, 
Kostya Serebrainy,
Marco Molteni,
Johannes Zellner,
Ole Gerden, 
Olaf Meeuwissen,
Feiyi Wang,
Robert J. Clark,
Matthias Baas,
Walter Mueller, 
William van Dieten,
Joshua Jensen,
Patrick Alberts,
Jacques Tremblay,
John Sturton,
Moshe Kruger,
David Wong,
Peter Garner,
Fred Labrosse,
Frank Schimmel,
Reinhard Nissl,
Alexander Gidon,
and many others for suggestions, patches and bug reports.
</ul>
*/