Article
Yuri Marx · Jan 25, 2021 2m read
Open Exchange

Static Documentation Generators

#Development Environment #Documentation

Hi Community,

In the past, technical documentation of the source code and software products was generated in chm, pdf files and documentation generators of the programming languages themselves. This old approach had the following limitations:
1. Outdated documentation;
2. Non-interactive and difficult to consult documentation;
3. Layout unresponsive, unfriendly and not adherent to HTML;
4. Inability to customize the layout of the documentation;
5. Inability to have HTML 5 documentation online and offline.
6. Lack of Markdown support.

Today, there are several documentation generation solutions that produce Web Documentation Portals that are very attractive, interactive, responsive and with static and dynamic options, with full support for HTML 5 and more recently Markdown.

See the table with the most popular open source options:

Documentation Product Stars

MkDocs
Github Repo: https://github.com/mkdocs/mkdocs

  • Static and dynamic documentation generation
  • Simple and lightweight and buit in Python
  • Smart full-text search box
  • Multiple themes and plug-ins
  • Support to Markdown and HTML
  • Integration with Git pages
  • Extensible using Python
  • SPA architecture
 11.4k
Docsify
Github Repo: https://github.com/docsifyjs/docsify
  • No statically built html files
  • Simple and lightweight (~21kB gzipped)
  • Smart full-text search plugin
  • Multiple themes
  • Useful plugin API
  • Compatible with IE11
  • Support SSR
  • Support embedded files
 16.5k
Docusaurus
Github: https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus/
  • Powered by Markdown
  • Built Using React
  • Ready for Translations
  • Document Versioning
  • Document Search
  • Quick Setup
 21.4k
Slate
Github: https://github.com/slatedocs/slate
  • Clean, intuitive design
  • Single page documentation
  • Markdown support
  • Out-of-the-box syntax highlighting
  • Write code samples in multiple languages
  • Automatic, smoothly scrolling table of contents
  • Documentation is editable by users via Github
  • RTL Support
 31.9k

GitBook
https://www.gitbook.com/

  • Clean, intuitive design
  • Collaborative work/text edition
  • Support to drafts and versioning
  • Single page documentation
  • Markdown support
  • Out-of-the-box syntax highlighting
  • Write code samples in multiple languages
  • Automatic, smoothly scrolling table of contents
  • The better integration with Github
  • Multiple output formats (PDF, HTML5, epub,etc.)
  • Cloud hosting, with free plans to personal projects and paid plans to business use cases
 500,000 users

The IRIS Publisher in the Open Exchange allows you extract XData documentation blocks in HTML or Markdown and generate your app documentation website using MkDocs. See the instructions in the article: https://community.intersystems.com/post/creating-documentation-portal-your-intersystems-iris-application.

If you enjoyed, vote in my app: https://openexchange.intersystems.com/contest/current

Ref: https://dev.to/nafis/5-free-static-documentation-generators-you-must-che...

Check the related application on InterSystems Open Exchange
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Discussion (5)1
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Yuri Marx · Jan 26, 2021

Great, I will include, but gitbook is a cloud solution and it is free
only for personal projects, limited to 10 spaces. The solutions above
are free to business projects and with on-premises option

0 0
Eduard Lebedyuk · Jan 26, 2021

Their cloud hosting is not free but you can host it yourself.

1 0
Yuri Marx · Jan 26, 2021

The legacy version or current version can be hosted?

0 0