Natural Docs vs Sphinx

Natural Docs is a command-line documentation generator that scans source-code comments and text files to create HTML documentation, including API references. Its syntax is designed to read like ordinary English in both source code and generated pages. The project says it comes configured for 25 programming languages and can be extended; for certain languages, it can also read Javadoc and Microsoft XML comments without rewrites. Generated pages have three panels, dynamic navigation, search and summaries that appear when readers hover over links. They can be opened from a local hard drive without installed software, and styled with custom CSS and images. Natural Docs runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. It is free and open source under AGPL version 3. The license requires source availability for modified distributions, projects incorporating its source, and services incorporating its functionality; merely documenting a project does not place that project under AGPL. Help is available through a Reddit forum, email and GitHub issues, with commercial support contracts available to businesses.

Sphinx is a free Python application that generates technical documentation from structured text. Authors can use reStructuredText or MyST Markdown; Markdown requires installing MyST-Parser separately. Built-in builders produce HTML, LaTeX for PDF, ePub, manual pages, Texinfo, and plain text. References can link sections, figures, tables, citations, glossaries, and code objects within one project or across projects. The autodoc extension imports documented modules and includes material from their docstrings. Themes and extensions, both built-in and third-party, add options such as diagrams, doctests, and API documentation. Other built-in extensions provide GitHub Pages publishing, Graphviz graphs, and intersphinx links. Sphinx also supports gettext-based translation and full-text search. It can be installed through Python and platform package managers, Docker, or from source, then deployed to services such as Read the Docs, GitHub Pages, GitLab Pages, Netlify, or self-hosted servers. Its code is released under the two-clause BSD license, and the project is community supported.