Improving ddoc

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 12/31/2014 10:17 PM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> Why is doxygen insufficient? Is there a reason ddoc was invented
> rather than supporting the practically-industry-standard doxygen
> format from the start?

There was a time when D did not have Ddoc. Doxygen was available. Perhaps 2 or 3 
people used it.

The problem was Doxygen was some add on tool. It was not part of the 
downloadable D package. It couldn't be. Anyone wanting to use Doxygen was going 
to have to:

1. pray a version exists on the platform they have that D is installed on.
2. pray that version was the one the D docs were expecting.
3. buy Doxygen.
4. download and install Doxygen successfully.
5. Doxygen is a large and complex tool - lots of work to understand it.
6. expect the D community to provide tech support with "Doxygen is not working 
on my D documents."

The end result was, essentially nobody used Doxygen. In fact, nobody used any 
sort of documentation system, and we know what the result looked like - your 
typical out-of-date, totally wrong, or non-existent normally found with C and 
C++ projects.

Ddoc, being:

1. always there
2. always the correct version
3. Ddoc is trivial to learn and use

revolutionized the D documentation. And that's an understatement.