[IDLdoc 3.0, Michael Galloy, idldoc.idldev.com]

Welcome to the Getting Started with IDLdoc 3.0 video!

IDLdoc is a tool for generating documentation from IDL source code. IDLdoc
3.0 was rewritten from scratch to allow for an open source BSD-style license.

Let's begin with a simple example.

[type: idldoc, root='simple', output='simple-docs']

Any source code that compiles can be run through IDLdoc. [up arrow] The output
will list the routines and their arguments for each file in the directory
hierarchy specified by the ROOT keyword. Output can be directed to a separate
directory with the OUTPUT keyword.

Here's the output from code that contained no comments.

[look at simple-docs]

This in itself can be useful for examining a code base, but with the addition
of properly marked up comments, much more information can be included in the
documentation.

[pull over rst style header]

There are now several different format styles that IDLdoc can understand. The
traditional IDL header template, the old IDLdoc style (with the @ tags), or
the new restructured text based style shown here. These styles are specified
either with the FORMAT_STYLE keyword to IDLDOC or the docformat comment at the
beginning of the file.

Here's the output from the code with the comments just shown.

[look at full docs]

Each of these styles has syntax for documenting parameters, keywords, return
values, author information, and many other aspects of the code.

[idldoc.idldev.com]

For more information about IDLdoc, check out its project website --
idldoc.idldev.com. Mailing lists, source code, feature and bug tickets, and
other information is available there.