Question

I want to improve my auto-complete ability in emacs to include javadoc support. Assuming that I have source jars for everything, is there a tool I can use to query the source jars for javadoc data? The output format isn’t too important as it can probably be massaged a bit.

So the input to the tool is a classpath and a class name, and some options, just like javap

Answer 1

if vim could do it, would you go with it? 😛

after a quick search, I found that javaDoc uses Doclet to generate html javadocs.

package info of Doclet:

The Doclet API (also called the Javadoc API) provides a mechanism for
clients to inspect the source-level structure of programs and
libraries, including javadoc comments embedded in the source.

And you could check Doclet api for detail. I am afraid that you have to write your own command-line tool (java program) to get the javadoc comments.

Doclet API:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/javadoc/doclet/spec/index.html

Taglet API you may want to take a look too.

Taglet API is an interface provided for custom formatting the text of
Javadoc tags.

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5/docs/guide/javadoc/taglet/spec/com/sun/tools/doclets/Taglet.html

And just curious, you want to do auto-compeletion why you need javaDoc? I thought you need tags of java source codes. well I am not an emacs
user, ignore it if it was a stupid question.