A doc comment consists of characters between the characters /** that begin the comment and the characters */ that end it. Leading asterisks are allowed on each line and are described below. Text in a comment can continue to multiple lines.

  • Leading asterisks
    When Javadoc Tool parses a doc comment, leading asterisk (*) characters on each line are discarded.
  • First sentence
    The first sentence of each doc comment is a summary sentence.
    This sentence can be retrieved from $doc.firstSentenceTags.
    The first sentence tags are a collection of inline tags until full stops (.).
  • Comment and tag sections
    A comment is the main description which begins after the starting delimiters /** and
    continues until the tag section. A tag section starts with the first block tag. The  comment can be retrieved by $doc.comment 
  • Comments written in HTML
    Text is written in HTML and will be rendered as HTML support before being printed to a report. (See Appendix D: HTML Tag Support)
  • Block and in-line tags
    A tag is a special keyword within a doc comment that Javadoc Tool can process. There are two kinds of tags:
         (i) Block tags
             They can be placed only in the tag section. The block tag form is @tag.
             The block tag can be accessed directly from the root document such as $doc.param and        $doc.author. 
             The $doc.tags will provide a collection of all the tags appearing in this Javadoc.

         (ii) Inline tags
              They can be placed anywhere in the main description or in the block tags. The inline tag form is {@tag}.

The table below lists Current Supported Tags

TagJDKReport Wizard Support
@author 1.0Yes
{@code}1.5Render as
<code>text</code>
{@docRoot}1.3Not supported
@deprecated1.0Yes
@exception1.0Yes
{@inheritDoc}1.4Not supported
{@link}1.2Yes, with conditions
(External link, model support,
and class/method link will be
ignored)
{@linkplain}1.4Yes, see
{@link link}
{@literal}1.5Yes
@param1.0Yes
@return1.0Yes
@see1.0Yes, with conditions
(External link, model
support, and class/method
link will be return as plain text)
@serial1.2Yes
@serialData1.2Yes
@serialField1.2Yes
@since1.1Yes
@throws1.2Yes
{@value}1.4Not Supported
@version1.0Yes