Taglets: User Guide: User Guide

The Taglets Collection started out as a couple of simple classes a couple of years ago (2002 to be exact). It has been working like a charm for many years and has been tweaked now and then to work with the latest JavaDoc versions.

When J2SE 1.5 introduced a new JavaDoc implementation the initial etaglets (used at Ergon Informatik AG) didn't work with the new release since they used some implementation specific features that were no longer compatible.

For quite a while we have been using the old etaglets in newer projects, specifically using J2SE 1.4 JavaDoc to build the API documentation until we got fed up with that in 2006 and we (Thomas Traber and Bruno Essmann) set out to build a new version that could also work with other JavaDoc implementations. The result was that we created the Taglets Collection as an open source project with a BSD style license. SourceForge was kind enough to provide a home for this project.

Usage

One of the main features of the old etaglets library was that it was easy to use. In this spirit we have tried to keep usage of the Taglets Collection as easy as possible while keeping it highly customizable and providing some nice interfaces to build your own taglets with.

This user guide is split into several sections each covering additional features (the demo folder listed below refers to the folder location in the binary distribution):

Simple Usage

Section	Simple Usage
Contents	This section deals with the most simple usage of the Taglets Collection. It describes how to invoke taglets in general and shows how to build the simple demo.
Demo Folder	`demo/simple`

Extended Usage

Section	Extended Usage
Contents	Here you will see how to tweak JavaDoc output and how to configure some of the taglets properties.
Demo Folder	`demo/extended`

Custom Taglets

Section	Custom Taglets
Contents	A short introduction to creating custom taglets and adding new tags using the taglets configuration files.
Demo Folder	`demo/custom`

Default Configuration

Section	Default Configuration
Contents	This section of the user guide describes the default configuration of the Taglets Collection. If you are using the canned version, the configuration, tags and shutdown taglets described here are available without further tweaking.

Predefined Tags

Section	Predefined Tags
Contents	This section describes the predefined tags included in the default configuration of the Taglets Collection. It also describes the canned taglets classes that are suitable for defining new tags from existing taglet classes.

Shutdown Taglets

Section	Shutdown Taglets
Contents	This section describes the shutdown taglets included in the default configuration of the Taglets Collection. It also describes the canned shutdown classes that are suitable for defining new shutdown actions.

If you would like to know more about the details of some features do not hesitate to check out the sources of the configuration files or the Taglets API for more information.

Past, Present & Future

What follows are a couple of links to the past, present and future of the Taglets Collection:

Past

References	Changes Revision History
Contents	Check out the news page to see what has changed in past releases, or if you simply want to see the release dates head over to the revision history.

Present

References	Known Bugs/Limitations
Contents	This page lists known bugs and workarounds for the Taglets Collection as well as the JavaDoc tool when used in conjunction with the Taglets Collection.

Future

References	ToDo List
Contents	A listing lists of feature requests, ideas and things we might or might not add to a future release of the Taglets Collection.

Source Build

Building the Taglets Collection from scratch is beyond this user guide. However there is a complete section dealing with the development of the Taglets Collection.

Please head over to the Development Section of the documentation for more information.