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Asked: 2026-05-15T11:43:35+00:00

What tools exist for developing platform indepedent API Documentation? I’m in the process of

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What tools exist for developing platform indepedent API Documentation?

I’m in the process of designing a proposed API, and want to write documentation in a structured and easily editable way. A lot of the answers I’ve seen have basically been “Use built in language specific documentation tools”, but since I’m designing the API from a ‘top-level’, rather than implementing it, this isn’t so useful. I’m looking for a CMS for API Documentation

I’ve seen a few suggestions to use PBWiki or Confluence, but I’m not convinced that a plain wiki is the best option, though the version control aspects are nice.

In theory, a Drupal build with CCK for API calls and Views for reading the API, but that’s a bit of heavy lifting for what I’m looking for.

Is there a API Documentation Management System out there? What are the best options for writing and managing platform-independent documentation for APIs?

I’ve seen the related questions for this, but there has yet to be a satisfactory answer.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Any structured text language will do. I’d use latex, and troff is old school.

    But you may have missed the point of the suggestion to use doxygen or whatever. If you do that, then writing the documentation is also laying down the scaffold for the eventual implementation. Better still, the example documentation will be in the same format as the eventual real documentation and, you will–of course—use source control on it, won’t you? So you’ll have a potted history of changes to the spec.

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