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  5. Sphinx vs jsdoc

Sphinx vs jsdoc

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Sphinx
Sphinx
Stacks1.1K
Followers300
Votes32
jsdoc
jsdoc
Stacks784
Followers155
Votes6

Sphinx vs jsdoc: What are the differences?

Introduction

This Markdown code provides a comparison between Sphinx and JSDoc, highlighting their key differences.

  1. Documentation Format: Sphinx is primarily used for documenting Python projects and generates HTML documentation from reStructuredText files, while JSDoc is specifically designed for documenting JavaScript code and generates HTML documentation from JSDoc comments in the source code.

  2. Language Support: Sphinx supports multiple programming languages, including Python, C++, and PHP, allowing the documentation of projects in different languages. On the other hand, JSDoc is focused solely on JavaScript, providing extensive support for documenting JavaScript codebases.

  3. Documentation Styling: Sphinx offers a wide range of customizability options through themes and templates, enabling the documentation to match the project's branding and design. JSDoc, on the other hand, has limited styling options and relies more on external tools or frameworks for customization.

  4. Auto-Generated Documentation: Sphinx provides the functionality to automatically generate documentation from source code, allowing for the automation of documentation updates. JSDoc also offers automated documentation generation but is more reliant on explicit JSDoc comments and annotations within the code.

  5. Rich Documentation Features: Sphinx provides more comprehensive support for features like cross-referencing, indexing, and search functionality in the generated documentation. JSDoc primarily focuses on documenting functions, parameters, and properties but lacks some of the advanced features available in Sphinx.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Sphinx has a well-established community, extensive documentation, and a wide range of third-party extensions and plugins, making it suitable for large-scale projects with diverse requirements. JSDoc also has an active community, but its ecosystem is more JavaScript-centric, catering specifically to JavaScript documentation needs.

In Summary, Sphinx is a versatile documentation tool suitable for various programming languages, providing extensive customizability and comprehensive documentation features. JSDoc, on the other hand, is targeted towards JavaScript projects, offering specific JavaScript documentation capabilities while relying on external tools for advanced styling and customization.

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Detailed Comparison

Sphinx
Sphinx
jsdoc
jsdoc

It lets you either batch index and search data stored in an SQL database, NoSQL storage, or just files quickly and easily — or index and search data on the fly, working with it pretty much as with a database server.

JSDoc 3 is an API documentation generator for JavaScript, similar to JavaDoc or PHPDoc. You add documentation comments directly to your source code, right along side the code itself. The JSDoc Tool will scan your source code, and generate a complete HTML documentation website for you.

Output formats: HTML (including Windows HTML Help), LaTeX (for printable PDF versions), ePub, Texinfo, manual pages, plain text;Extensive cross-references: semantic markup and automatic links for functions, classes, citations, glossary terms and similar pieces of information;Hierarchical structure: easy definition of a document tree, with automatic links to siblings, parents and children;Automatic indices: general index as well as a language-specific module indices;Code handling: automatic highlighting using the Pygments highlighter;Extensions: automatic testing of code snippets, inclusion of docstrings from Python modules (API docs), and more
Up and running easily; Command line interface;
Statistics
Stacks
1.1K
Stacks
784
Followers
300
Followers
155
Votes
32
Votes
6
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 16
    Fast
  • 9
    Simple deployment
  • 6
    Open source
  • 1
    Lots of extentions
Pros
  • 2
    Far less verbose
  • 1
    Simpler type safe than TypeScript
  • 1
    Does almost everything TS does
  • 1
    Actively maintained
  • 1
    No compiler needed
Integrations
DevDocs
DevDocs
Zapier
Zapier
Google Drive
Google Drive
Google Chrome
Google Chrome
Dropbox
Dropbox
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Sphinx, jsdoc?

Postman

Postman

It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide.

Swagger UI

Swagger UI

Swagger UI is a dependency-free collection of HTML, Javascript, and CSS assets that dynamically generate beautiful documentation and sandbox from a Swagger-compliant API

Apiary

Apiary

It takes more than a simple HTML page to thrill your API users. The right tools take weeks of development. Weeks that apiary.io saves.

ReadMe.io

ReadMe.io

It is an easy-to-use tool to help you build out documentation! Each documentation site that you publish is a project where there is space for documentation, interactive API reference guides, a changelog, and much more.

Docusaurus

Docusaurus

Docusaurus is a project for easily building, deploying, and maintaining open source project websites.

Read the Docs

Read the Docs

It hosts documentation, making it fully searchable and easy to find. You can import your docs using any major version control system, including Mercurial, Git, Subversion, and Bazaar.

Gelato.io

Gelato.io

Gelato.io is a SaaS tool for creating API documentation and developer portals.

MkDocs

MkDocs

It builds completely static HTML sites that you can host on GitHub pages, Amazon S3, or anywhere else you choose. There's a stack of good looking themes available. The built-in dev-server allows you to preview your documentation as you're writing it. It will even auto-reload and refresh your browser whenever you save your changes.

MireDot

MireDot

Generate REST documentation directly from your Java source code. This ensures always up-to-date and accurate documentation with minimal effort.

Gitbook

Gitbook

It is a modern documentation platform where teams can document everything from products, to APIs and internal knowledge-bases. It is a place to think and track ideas for you & your team.

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