About Doxml

Doxml is a tool for writing good looking software documentation. It's based on XML markup and it offers basic HTML syntax with additional tags such as <md> for Markdown, <snippet> for highlighted code snippets, <note> for notes, etc.

Why Doxml?

Short answer: Markdown is not expressive enough.

Long answer: There are many different tools that can be used to produce software documentation, however they are either too simple or too complex. Documentation writers should not be asked to configure layout, use templates and do other complex stuff. They should be focused on describing the actual product, use the right words and check for grammar. The actual problems that I think about while I'm writing this.

Doxml tries to be a documentation oriented swiss army knife, think Bootstrap, just for documentation. You want to use Markdown? Use it! Want to copy/paste a code snippet? Paste it! Doxml will highlight it for you.

Why XML? .NET?

Why is Doxml based on XML and not some other data format, YAML for example? Well it's all related to my prior experience. With strong background with XML and .NET, I was confident it will do the job.