Automatic generation of component documentation

[Kristian Nielsen]

Dear Lee,

At the MC workshop at Oak Ridge in January, we briefly discussed the
possibility of automatically generating documentation on components from
comments in the source code itself. The advantage of this approach is
that as the size of the component library grows, the manual maintenance
of the documentation will turn into a nightmare. By using automatic
techniques, documentation can be maintained with a realistic amount of
effort.

Together with Emmanuel Farhi, I have now implemented a first version of
this scheme. The result may be seen on

    http://neutron.risoe.dk/mcstas/mcdoc/components/

Some documentation on the system itself is at

    http://neutron.risoe.dk/mcstas/mcdoc/

In the future, this will also be used to automatically generate
documentation for a graphical user interface to the engine and for the
hardcopy manual.

I thought you might be interested in this. I would be happy to discuss
any questions you may have.

 - Kristian.