Comment formatting has been a great addition to NetBeans, however; it's formatting rules are too restrictive and when turned off is a regression to the pre-formatting days. I can't remember when comment formatting was introduced (7.1?), however; when it was introduced turning it off will now require more work to provide properly formatted JavaDoc.


As an example, suppose you have the interface method:

  String test(String arg);

Now if you type the following where the insert cursor is the underscore:

  /**_
  String test(String arg);

Then press [Return] you end up with:

  /**
  _    
  @param arg
  @return 
  */

Prior to javadoc formatting you would at least end up with a properly formatted comment block but no tags:

  /**
   * _
   */

I propose that when formatting is turned off that the following rules still remain:

 * A leading star is inserted and aligned to the star at the top of the comment
 * A space is inserted after the star.
 * Turn off, or provide the ability to turn off inserting all @tags.

FYI my reasoning why I don't use JavaDoc formatting is because of [bug:255462] [1]

 [1]: https://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=255462