As I prepare office-stamper for its version 3.0 milestone, I’ve spent much of July looking at the code not through the eyes of a developer, but through the eyes of a newcomer.

When I first forked the original docx-stamper, my focus was on survival: making it modular, removing Lombok, and ensuring it could survive a Java migration. But as the project matures, “working code” isn’t enough. For office-stamper to thrive as a fork that improved significantly over its predecessor, it needs to be inviting.

This month, I launched what I’m calling “The Great Documentation Offensive.”

Commit: 00c1c82

Motivation: The Road to 3.0

Version 3.0 isn’t just a number; it’s a commitment to stability and clarity. I want to make it crystal clear how this library has evolved. To do that, I need to lower the barrier for contributors—and even for my future self.

There’s a specific kind of technical debt that doesn’t show up in compiler errors: ambiguity. When a method takes a String and returns an Object, what are the invariants? Can they be null? What exceptions are actually expected vs. just possible?

Documentation as Code: The Perfect Place

To me, Javadoc is the “docs-as-code” ideal for library maintainers. It’s the perfect place for a contributor or user to get answers while they are “fiddling” with the library.

In this overhaul, I haven’t just added comments for the sake of it. I’ve focused on the “why” and the “how” of the core abstractions:

  • CommentProcessorRegistry: Clarified how inline content and comments are evaluated against registered processors.
  • CustomFunction: Documented the functional interfaces used for SpEL integration, making it easier to see how to extend the engine.
  • ExceptionResolver: Defined the contract for fallback values and error logging.

Tooling Choice: Upgrading the Type System

Along with prose, I’ve introduced org.jetbrains.annotations (specifically @NotNull and @Nullable).

While I chose these mostly for convenience (as IntelliJ is my primary workshop), they serve a deeper purpose. They effectively “improve” the Java type system by providing semantic hints that the compiler misses.

// Before: You had to guess or read the implementation
public String resolve(Placeholder placeholder, String message, Exception cause);

// After: The IDE and the developer know the contract instantly
@NotNull
public String resolve(
    @NotNull Placeholder placeholder, 
    @NotNull String message, 
    @NotNull Exception cause
);

These annotations provide better warnings in the IDE and act as a form of “executable documentation” that guides the development process without adding the overhead of complex validation libraries.

Future Impact: Attractiveness and Onboarding

My hope is that these efforts make the library more attractive to the community. A well-documented project signals health and care.

Six months from now, when a developer tries to implement a custom CommentProcessor, they shouldn’t have to read the entire engine’s source code to understand how to handle an exception or where the context comes from. The answers should be right there, at their fingertips, in the Javadoc and the type signatures.

What’s Next?

With the documentation foundation laid, the path to 3.0 is clearer. We’re moving from “making it work” to “making it professional.”

August 1st 2025 — Commit Summary:

  • Docs: Massive Javadoc overhaul across api and core packages.
  • Chore: Introduced org.jetbrains.annotations for better nullability tracking.
  • Refactor: Improved internal method signatures in CommentProcessorRegistry and PlaceholderReplacer for clarity.
  • Chore: Update junit to 5.13.4.