HTML Output

Command-line option --format html (or -O html in short) makes pasdoc write HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) output. HTML files are usually viewed using web browsers, available on all modern computer systems.

It is the default output file format. Several files will be created for this output type, one for each unit, class, interface and object, additionally some overview files with lists of all constants, types etc.

This is the preferred output for online viewing.

Some details about HTML output:

CSS

The look of HTML output is controlled by CSS code in pasdoc.css file, generated by pasdoc while making HTML output. You can customize how your documentation looks by providing your own CSS file using --css or --css-based-on-bootstrap command-line options.

HTML standard conformance

Html output produced by pasdoc is completely valid HTML 4.01 Transitional format. See W3C HTML 4.01 Specification.

You can validate it using any html validator. In case you never used html validator:

  • W3C online validator is handy if you don’t want the trouble of installing anything on your computer.

  • There’s also excellent standalone validator nsgmls. It’s part of the SP suite. Debian users should be able to install it simply by installing package named sp.

  • A fork of SP suite is developed by project OpenJade. It’s named OpenSP. nsgmls is renamed inside this suite to onsgmls. Debian users should be able to install it simply by installing package named opensp. Windows users should be able to install it as a cygwin package OpenSP.

    onsgmls is used by pasdoc’s automatic tests (inside tests/ subdirectory), so this is somewhat a "validator of choice" for us.

  • Emacs users can also use validator included in Emacs html mode (M-x sgml-next-trouble-spot, standard shortcut is C-c C-o).

  • Of course, this list doesn’t try to be exhaustive. There are many more html validators out there.