Many developers use tools such as doxygen, javadoc, etc to generate searchable/sortable documentation pages from documentation blocks that all follow a fairly standard, accepted format. Extending an idea provided by Eclipse and a number of other IDEs, the generation of the prototypes for these docblocks should be simple: Eclipse, for example, will automatically add "@param $p_name" lines for each function parameter when a docblock is started previous to the declaration of the function: "/** [ enter ]".

While Qt-Creator's auto-completion currently recognizes possible tag values inside of a docblock (type \p [ctrl+space] and you get a list of \param, \package, \property), it is up to the developer to write the entire contents of the block.

Qt-Creator should help simplify the process of generating inline code documentation. Either by a project configuration option or auto-completion following "/**", block prototypes should automatically be generated when a function is prototyped, a class is declared, a page is created, etc. These documentation blocks should be kept up to date while the developer is working on the functions: adding parameters, adding default parameters, changing return types, adding Exceptions. For example, when an additional parameter is added to a function, a "\param" entry is added to the docblock.

Tasks:

• Provide special auto-completion entries at specific points in a source file that will automatically create a boilerplate based off of current source values:

• At the line before a function prototype
• At the line before a class declaration
• At the line previous to global variable declarations, typedefs, and other non-scoped tokens.
• At any line legal for the page-level docblock

• Make sure docblock content is kept updated compared to the source they are documenting:

• Adding a parameter to a function should insert a line to the docblock: "\param $type [default] Documentation Here..."
• Adding an exception/throw to a function should insert an appropriate "\except" line.

• When adding content to a docblock, the editor should be aware of special content sections, such as "\startcode ... \endcode" and format them properly.