Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Natural Docs VS Pygments

Compare Natural Docs VS Pygments and see what are their differences

Natural Docs logo Natural Docs

Natural Docs is an open-source documentation generator for multiple programming languages.

Pygments logo Pygments

Generic syntax highlighter suitable for use in code hosting, forums, wikis or other applications...
  • Natural Docs Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-02-02
  • Pygments Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-15

Natural Docs features and specs

  • Readable Comments
    Natural Docs is designed to create natural language documentation from comments, making it easy for developers to write and maintain them.
  • Automatic Linking
    It automatically links documentation elements, like functions and classes, helping users navigate the documentation effortlessly.
  • Wide Language Support
    Natural Docs supports a wide range of programming languages, making it versatile for different projects.
  • Ease of Use
    The tool is relatively easy to set up and use, even for developers who are new to documentation generation.
  • Customization Options
    There are options for customizing the output, allowing developers to tailor the documentation to suit their project's style and needs.

Possible disadvantages of Natural Docs

  • Limited Output Formats
    Natural Docs mainly generates HTML documentation, which might not be suitable for all use cases or integrated documentation setups.
  • Markdown Support
    As of the latest information, it lacks extensive support for Markdown, which is a commonly used format for writing documentation.
  • Initial Learning Curve
    While easy to use, there is an initial learning curve to understand how to properly write comments to generate the desired documentation.
  • Active Maintenance
    The frequency of updates and active maintenance might not be as robust as other more popular documentation tools, potentially leading to slower adoption of new features.
  • Specificity
    While versatile, it might not cater to highly specific documentation needs out of the box without significant customization or workarounds.

Pygments features and specs

  • Wide Language Support
    Pygments supports a broad range of programming languages and file formats, making it highly versatile for developers working in diverse environments.
  • High-Quality Output
    The library produces highly readable and aesthetically pleasing highlighted code, which is crucial for documentation and presentation.
  • Easy Integration
    Pygments is designed to integrate easily with a variety of web frameworks, content management systems, and text editors.
  • Customization Options
    Users can customize styles, themes, and output formats to meet specific needs, providing flexibility for different aesthetic requirements.
  • Active Community
    A strong, active community contributes to its continuous development and improvement, ensuring it stays updated with the latest languages and features.

Possible disadvantages of Pygments

  • Performance Overhead
    For large codebases or high-frequency requests, using Pygments can introduce performance overhead, potentially slowing down applications.
  • Dependency Management
    As with any library, integrating Pygments means managing its dependencies and ensuring compatibility with other project components.
  • Complexity in Advanced Use
    While basic usage is straightforward, more advanced features and customizations can introduce complexity, requiring a deeper understanding of the library.
  • Limited Built-In Features
    Pygments primarily focuses on syntax highlighting, so additional functionality (like code execution or detailed analysis) has to be handled by other tools or custom development.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Natural Docs and Pygments)
Documentation
65 65%
35% 35
Knowledge Base
100 100%
0% 0
Documentation As A Service & Tools
Development
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Pygments seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 10 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Natural Docs mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Natural Docs yet. Tracking of Natural Docs recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Pygments mentions (10)

  • Ask HN: Printing Code to Paper?
    Some starter ideas[0] beyond spacing/line numbers. BNF format is used to describe a programming language. treesitter as a text editor plug in makes use of a language BNF description to be able to know how to parse & format a given lanuage in a text editor (aka pygments[1], gnu source code hightlights, [2] neovim with treesitter[3]). Aka searching google "treesitter work with microsoft notepade" --- [0] :... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Marcel the Shell
    I suspect Pygments will be to your liking. https://pygments.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Blog in django
    It's not clear exactly what you want, but if you mean syntax highlighting, you could use pygments https://pygments.org/. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • I'm looking for a way to display live changes to a text file with Python
    Https://pygments.org/ - never tried it though. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Markdown, Asciidoc, or reStructuredText - a tale of docs-as-code
    Sphinx is incredibly powerful and can offer a table of contents, automatic links for functions, automatic code highlighting using Pygments, and other capabilities using built-in or third-party extensions. If you'd like to use (a flavor of) Markdown with Sphinx, you can do so using MyST-parser - a Sphinx and Docutils extension to parse MyST. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Natural Docs and Pygments, you can also consider the following products

Doxygen - Generate documentation from source code

prism.js - Prism is a lightweight, extensible syntax highlighter, built with modern web standards in mind.

DocFX - A documentation generation tool for API reference and Markdown files!

Asciidoctor - In the spirit of free software, everyone is encouraged to help improve this project.

NDoc - NDoc generates class library documentation from .

pandoc - Pandoc is a Haskell library for converting from one markup format to another, and a command-line...