Enhancements in Javadoc, Java SE 1.3

This document describes the changes made to the Javadoc tool between versions 1.2.2 and 1.3.

New Features

Added {@docRoot} - This is a new Javadoc tag that represents the path from any class page up to the root directory of the generated documentation hierarchy. The purpose of this tag is to allow you to make a link to a single web page from all generated pages, such as to a copyright page or corporate logo from the footers of all generated pages. (This tag was broken in 1.3 Beta) (Request #a4197510).

MIF doclet. This adds the ability to generate MIF output, for importing into FrameMaker and eventual conversion to PDF, PS, RTF, Word, or WordPerfect.

Bug Fixes

4260169: Added <code> HTML tag to "Overrides", "Specified By" and "Tags copied from".

4276757: Fixed Javadoc to document inherited public members of package-private classes.

4214932: Fixed bug where private fields/methods were documented as inherited.

4216836: The "Specified by:" link has been added for a method in an interface implementing a method from a superinterface.

4227539: We now list interfaces found walking all the way up the hierarchy tree. For interfaces, added "All superinterfaces: A, B, C". For classes, added "All implemented interfaces: A, B, C".

4233601: In inner class summary, fixed bug where Exceptions were mistakenly listed as Interfaces.

4216434: Fixed Javadoc -help option which didn't print all the options (-helpfile, -stylesheetfile).

4235271: Fixed bug where overriding method in Interface is now shown as "Specified By".

4231274: Added a missing space ahead of parenthetical phrase "(also extends...)"

4285930: Changed second argument of -linkoffline so that if supplying a relative path, you should make it relative to the destination directory (supplied with -d) rather than relative to the current directory from where javadoc is run.

Future Enhancements

To possibly do in a release after 1.3

XML Doclet - for a standardized representation of static program information of a set of packages. This might possibly allow developers to incrementally build a single document from separate Javadoc runs. By saving the intermediate representation from each Javadoc run, it would allow merging of those into a complete document, with fully updated index, tree, class hierarchy, subclasses list, etc.