JDK 9 RFR of JDK-8053918: make the spec for @Documented comprehensible

[Joseph D. Darcy]

How about as a first sentence

"The Documented meta-annotation indicates whether or not annotations of 
the annotation types it annotates are considered part of the public 
contract of the elements they in turn annotate."

(Admittedly still a bit convoluted.)

-Joe


On 5/11/2015 4:07 PM, Jonathan Gibbons wrote:
> Although the original "first sentence" is somewhat hard to parse, at 
> least there is a single "first sentence"  The rewrite doesn't seem to 
> have such a succint first sentence.
>
> If I were to change just one word in the original first sentence, I 
> would change "with" to "on":
>
> - * Indicates that annotations with a type are to be documented by 
> javadoc
> - * and similar tools by default.
> + * Indicates that annotations on a type are to be documented by javadoc
> +* and similar tools by default.
>
> -- Jon
>
> On 05/11/2015 03:58 PM, joe darcy wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Some are of the opinion that the specification for the Documented 
>> meta-annotation type could be clarified.
>>
>>     JDK-8053918: make the spec for @Documented comprehensible
>>     http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~darcy/8053918.0/
>>
>> Please review the patch below which aims to accomplish this.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> -Joe
>>
>> --- 
>> old/src/java.base/share/classes/java/lang/annotation/Documented.java 
>> 2015-05-11 15:54:37.273033243 -0700
>> +++ 
>> new/src/java.base/share/classes/java/lang/annotation/Documented.java 
>> 2015-05-11 15:54:37.153033240 -0700
>> @@ -26,12 +26,20 @@
>>  package java.lang.annotation;
>>
>>  /**
>> - * Indicates that annotations with a type are to be documented by 
>> javadoc
>> - * and similar tools by default.  This type should be used to 
>> annotate the
>> - * declarations of types whose annotations affect the use of annotated
>> - * elements by their clients.  If a type declaration is annotated with
>> - * Documented, its annotations become part of the public API
>> - * of the annotated elements.
>> + * When an annotation type <i>A</i> is annotated with {@code
>> + * Documented}, the presence and value of annotations of type <i>A</i>
>> + * are a part of the public contract of the elements <i>A</i>
>> + * annotates.
>> + *
>> + * Conversely, if an annotation type <i>B</i> is <em>not</em>
>> + * annotated with {@code Documented}, the presence and value of
>> + * <i>B</i>annotations are <em>not</em> part of the public contract of
>> + * the elements <i>B</i> annotates.
>> + *
>> + * Concretely, if an annotation type is annotated with {@code
>> + * Documented}, by default a tool like javadoc will display
>> + * annotations of that type in its output while annotations of
>> + * annotation types without {@code Documented} will not be displayed.
>>   *
>>   * @author  Joshua Bloch
>>   * @since 1.5
>>
>