[Generate External Documentation] Replace hardcoded layout with template engine

[vody]

It looks like that "Generate External Documentation" functionality generates a hardcoded layout with very limited customisation capabilities. As with a demand to generate docs in a different format (Example), it will be good to have an option to introduce a custom layout using some sort of template engine similar as DocFX doing with their template system. Another option is to not generate a layout at all and instead build a DocFX Metadata so then DocFX can be used to generate a markdown files. It will be good to discus options.

[theschitz]

Hi @vody!

Based on your description and what I understand of the documentation it seems like creating a DocFx Metadata file would allow for the most flexibility, would you agree? The docs were pretty thin on the Metadata file however, do you have any more examples to share for that?

[jwikman]

Hi @vody

Yes, the documentation layout is very hardcoded and created to match our own purposes. (Example).

I think that inventing our own template system would be way too much work.
But adding a setting to instead create some kind of MetaData is absolutely possible and should be a lot easier implement.

If you could help us with creating some valid sample metadata from an AL object (or even several objects, to cover different variants of naming, object types, etc.), we could definitely look into this.