When comparing JSDoc vs dox, the Slant community recommends JSDoc for most people. In the question“What are the best documentation generators for Node.js apps?” JSDoc is ranked 1st while dox is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose JSDoc is:
The community behind JSDoc has built sever templates and other related tools that allow you to use JSDoc in a simpler and more efficient way.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Numerous templates available
The community behind JSDoc has built sever templates and other related tools that allow you to use JSDoc in a simpler and more efficient way.
Pro Grunt plugin available
For people who like to use Grunt, there's a Grunt plugin available.
Pro Supports all jsDoc tags
dox has built-in support for all jsDoc tags and allows you to specify complex object types including optional flag =
, nullable ?
, non-nullable !
and variable arguments ...
Cons
Con Only provides an output of the API
JSDoc only provides a linear output of the API and not really a visually appealing or any information other than the methods and what they do. It's very technical so it may be hard for beginners to read documentation generated by it and understand it.
Con Needs to be integrated with another tool to generate readable documentation
dox only generates a JSON representation of the documentation. In order to have a fully readable documentation you need to integrate it with some other library that parses the JSON and returns HTML or markdown.