Guidelines for LabWindows/CVI programming style to simplify documentation

[Sandia_Mike]

Has anyone considered how to minimize documentation effort thru various LabWindows/CVI programming style guides plus whatever built-in features are available?  There's the HTML generator with the ///HIFUN and so on, but there must be more to do Doxygen-like documentation without excessive effort.  I'm working thru code I had a student intern develop, and of course I provided no guidance for programming style so am having trouble.  I'd like to work thru the code to revise it for readability and correct some functional problems.  Biggest problem is I'll work LabWindows for a bit, then drop it for months to work some other aspect of a project (embedded system design including circuit board design, analog circuits, microcontroller code, and of course user interface with LabWindows).  When I come back, I need to leave some notes to reduce my time to get up-to-speed again.

Thanks!

[margasan]

Hello Mike,

Your feedback and suggestions are always welcome, you can post it here:

http://forums.ni.com/t5/ideas/v2/ideaexchangepage/blog-id/cviideas

Warm regards

Mart G

[ElectroLund]

I just discovered a Doxygen-like open source project called Natural Docs.  It's very unobtrusive to your existing commenting style.  Very small "footprint" in your code and forgiving of individual style.

I have not yet implemented it in my code, but I'm going to give it a whirl.

[ElectroLund]

I've implemented Natural Docs now.  It's is quite nice in that it's mostly painless.  And your code commenting looks very nice too.

My source code

The HTML output

Caveat

Unfortunately, Natural Docs doesn't parse through lists like enums.  You have to duplicate the members of a data structure in the comment block to then get the formatted descriptions.  That's disappointing to me.  But I love how low-profile the system is.  Your comments dont' get mangled like they do with Doxygen.