A documentation generator is a programming tool

Programming tool

A programming tool or software development tool is a program or application that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications...

 that generates documentation

Documentation

Documentation is a term used in several different ways. Generally, documentation refers to the process of providing evidence.Modules of Documentation are Helpful...

 intended for programmers (API documentation) or end users (End-user

End-user

Economics and commerce define an end user as the person who uses a product. The end user or consumer may differ from the person who purchases the product...

 Guide), or both, from a set of specially comment

Comment (computer programming)

In computer programming, a comment is a programming language construct used to embed programmer-readable annotations in the source code of a computer program. Those annotations are potentially significant to programmers but typically ignorable to compilers and interpreters. Comments are usually...

ed source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

 files, and in some cases, binary file

Binary file

A binary file is a computer file which may contain any type of data, encoded in binary form for computer storage and processing purposes; for example, computer document files containing formatted text...

s.

Document generation can be divided in several type of documents:

• Batch documents (all automated documents)
• Interactive documents (documents that can not be produced automatically)
• Text block correspondence (documents created based on pre-defined text blocks)
• Forms (forms for websites)

You can place every type of document you come across in one of these categories.
A lot of software solutions are offered on the Internet that can automate these processes.
In particular, some integrated development environment

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

s
provide interactive access to documentation, code metadata, etc.

See also

• Comparison of documentation generators
• Template processor
  Template processor
  A template processor is software or a software component that is designed to combine one or moretemplates with a data model to produceone or more result documents...
  
  
• Static code analysis
  Static code analysis
  Static program analysis is the analysis of computer software that is performed without actually executing programs built from that software In most cases the analysis is performed on some version of the source code and in the other cases some form of the object code...
  
  
• Literate programming
  Literate programming
  Literate programming is an approach to programming introduced by Donald Knuth as an alternative to the structured programming paradigm of the 1970s....
  
  
• Integrated development environment
  Integrated development environment
  An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...