Program documentation with syntax highlighting

(Content of this page replaces earlier never fineshed content about FM-8 peculiarities. See information about this abandouned topic for exampe here.)

Every programmer uses a special program editor to develop code. To avoid common errors in coding, these editors highlight various syntactical elements of a program or script: variables, constants, function-names, keywords etc.

Hence documenting a program or script should make use of these functions. My favourite method is this:

1. Print the desired code snippet or the whole code to pdf.
2. Import (part) of that pdf into FrameMaker (by reference).
3. Describe the conents of this picture.

Examples

• ExtendScript (available for FrameMaker since version 10)
• Auto Hotkey (AHK) Script
• Windows ini file

PDF of a sample documentation done in FrameMaker.

My tools

Program/text editor: EditPad Pro. It comes with a host of syntax definitions. There is also a tool to develop/modify syntax definitions.

Publishing: FrameMaker since version 4. See the various pages on this site.