Reduce time and effort using a .NET Documentation Tool
Document! X is a combination of an automated .NET documentation tool and a full documentation authoring environment which can be used to create accurate, professional quality dotnet documentation for assemblies created with any .NET language (C#, Visual Basic, C++/CLI etc.).
Document! X is not just an automated documentation build tool - it is also includes a fully featured documentation authoring environment allowing you to create supplementary content (descriptions and remarks for Namespaces, Classes, Interfaces, Enumerations, members, hyperlinks to related pages, example code, index kewords etc.) where required.
Document! X is the documentation tool chosen by leading .NET component vendors including Infragistics, Xceed, Telerik, Dundas, Janus, Farpoint and GrapeCity.
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Why Choose Document! X for .NET Documentation?
- Fast, accurate, professional quality documentation;
- Market leading authoring tools for creating supplementary content;
- Documentation pages generated for assembly, namespace, class, interface, structure, enumeration, constructor, method, property, field, delegate;
- Automatically integrates the generated documentation with the Visual Studio F1 Help and Dynamic Help Window;
- Customizable HTML based template driven output can be adapted to your requirements and ships with standard phrases pre-translated to 9 different languages;
- Generate documentation to HTML Help 1.x (CHM), Help 2.x, Microsoft Help Viewer or web ready pure HTML including a full Table of Contents, Index and Full Text Search.
Sample Outputs
These sample outputs illustrate how much can be generated by Document! X right out of the box. All of the Document! X Templates are fully customizable and can be easily adapted or extended to meet your specific requirements.
Lightbox .NET Documentation, Class Overview Page
Overview of a .NET class, including an automatically generated Object Relationship Diagram, Inheritance Hierarchy and Syntax in multiple .NET languages.
Lightbox .NET Documentation, Constructor Overload Page
Page for a specific .NET constructor overload, including a link to the method summary page listing other overloads.
Lightbox COM Documentation, Class Overview Page
Overview of the COM class, including an automatically generated Object Relationship Diagram.
Lightbox XSD Documentation, Complex Type Page
Page generated for an XSD Complex Type, including a type diagram, overview data tree and XSD Source Code.
Lightbox Javascript Documentation, Method Page
Page generated for a Javascript method, documenting the syntax and parameters.
Lightbox Database Documentation, Table Page
Page generated for a Table, including Properties, Columns, Indexes, Relationships and SQL Source (where available). Also includes dependencies if documenting a Sql Server database.
Lightbox Web Service Documentation, GET Operation Page
Page generated for a GET Operation in a REST Web Service. Details the parameters, request/response data types and any fault responses.
Lightbox Web Service Documentation, Method Page
Page generated for a SOAP Web Service method. Details the parameters, request/response data types and any fault responses.
Lightbox Web Service and XSD Schema Documentation, Diagrams
Schema diagrams are automatically generated for web service operations that use XSD Types and XSD documentation pages.
Live Samples
Visual Comment Editor & Visual Studio Integration
The Document! X Visual Studio Visual Comment Editor provides a unique fully Visual Editor for your VB.NET, C#, F# or C++/CLI source code comments. Integrated directly with the Visual Studio IDE, the Visual Comment Editor allows you to create and edit comments directly within an editable preview of the generated documentation. Comments created with the Visual Editor are written back to your source code in standard XML format.
Document! X commands added to the Visual Studio toolbar and solution explorer context menu make it quick and easy to edit comments, create and build a documentation project right from within Visual Studio.
Lightbox Visual Studio Comment Editor
The Document! X Visual Studio Visual Comment Editor provides a unique fully Visual Editor for your VB.NET, C# or C++/CLI source code comments, integrated directly with the Visual Studio IDE. The Visual Comment Editor allows you to create and edit Xml comments in a WYSIWYG preview of the generated documentation.
Lightbox Standard Xml Source Comments
Even though you can author your content in a fully WYSIWYG editor, comments created or edited with the Visual Comment Editor are written back to your source code in standard XML source comment format.
Lightbox Your .NET Language of Choice
Document! X can document assemblies created with any Visual Studio language. The Visual Comment Editor supports C#, Visual Basic, C++/CLI and F# projects.
Lightbox Build from Visual Studio
Build your documentation projects directly from Visual Studio. Integrate Document! X with your team build using the provided command line build .exe, msbuild task or Workflow activity.
Content Authoring Options
You can also author content outside of source code if you wish, or combine both approaches and have some content in source XML comments and some in Document! X Content Files.
This approach is common as it allows technical writers to contribute more extensive content, or override content defined in source comments for editorial reasons, without preventing developers from documenting in the source.
Lightbox Content File Editor
In combination with, or as an alternative to authoring content in Xml Source Comments, create and maintain documentation content using the Document! X Content File Editor.
Lightbox .NET source comments always visible
The Document! X Content File editor shows you the .NET Xml source comments whilst you are editing, so that you can instantly see where the source documentation might require additional detail or replacement. Document! X will automatically populate the description of members inherited from elsewhere in your assembly or the .NET Framework to further reduce the amount of documentation authoring effort.
Lightbox Example Code Designer
A specific designer is included in both the Visual Studio Comment Editor and the Content File Editor to make creating examples quick and easy. Paste example code or use existing code files (or named regions within them) as your source.
Lightbox Object Model Digrams
The generated documentation for classes and structures will automatically include an Object Relationship Diagram. These diagrams are invaluable in helping users of your documentation make sense of the object model contained in your .NET Assemblies.
Lightbox Xml Comment File Regeneration
No matter where you decide to author your descriptive content, your assembly xml comment file can always be in sync - Document! X can generate an Xml comment file during build that always reflects the content of the generated documentation so intellisense will be always be accurate and up to date.
Lightbox Visual Studio F1 Help Integration
Document! X can output to a variety of formats, including browser help for publishing to a website, CHM and Microsoft Help Viewer. Microsoft Help Viewer is the help technology used by Visual Studio. Integrating documentation with Microsoft Help Viewer ensures that help for the assemblies you document is only ever an F1 key press away.
The same great authoring environment, including dynamic spell check, hyperlink designer and designers for example code, permissions, exceptions, index keywords etc. are available both in the Visual Studio Integrated Visual Comment Editor and in the Document! X Content File Editor.
Object Model Diagrams
Document! X automatically generates object relationship diagrams for your classes. Specific relationships can be ignored where necessary (e.g. a relationship back to a parent object). Collection objects are automatically recognized and appropriately represented.

Demonstration Movies
These short movies provide a great way to discover what can be achieved using Document! X.
Documenting a Database
This short introductory movie will take you through the process of creating a new Document! X Project for a Database (7 minutes).
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Documenting a COM Component
This short introductory movie will take you through the process of creating a new Document! X Project for a COM Component or Type Library (6 minutes).
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Documenting an Xsd Schema
This movie will take you through the process of producing documentation from an XSD Schema file using Document! X. (10 mins)
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Documenting a Javascript Library
This movie will demonstrate how Document! X can be used to create documentation for Javascript, both simple javascript function libraries as well as javascript object models and jQuery plugins and widgets. (13 mins)
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Documenting a Web Service
This movie will take you through the process of producing documentation for a Web Service (SOAP or REST) using Document! X. (11 mins)
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Documenting .NET Assemblies
This introductory movie will take you through the process of creating a new Document! X Project for one or more Microsoft .NET Assemblies (13 minutes).
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Publishing to a web site, ftp server or network location
This movie demonstrates the new Publishing functionality introduced in 2015.1. Publishing makes it easy to publish output generated by Document! X or HelpStudio to a web server or network location. A range of publishing methods are supported; you can publish to an Azure web site, a web site running on IIS, a web site that supports uploading via ftp, or directly to a local network path. (11 mins)
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Finding Undocumented Items
This movie provides a quick introduction to finding items in a project that still require documentation by using the Undocumented Items tool. (4 mins)
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Using Document! X with Visual Studio 2010
This movie demonstrates how Document! X integrates with Visual Studio 2010 and how it can become part of a routine development documentation workflow (5 mins).
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Introduction to Source Control
This video provides a demonstration on how to enable Source Control functionality, add a project to Source Control and access Source Control features in a Source Control enabled project. (6 mins)
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Automatic optimization for Tablet and Mobile devices
This video demonstrates how the Responsive Output feature allows you to generate content that automatically adapts to the device type of the browser, providing an optimal experience for Mobile, Tablet and Desktop users from a single output. (5 mins)
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Introduction to Localization features
This video will demonstrate how to use the localization features by enabling localization and creating both an English and Japanese output from the Document! X .NET sample project (9 mins).
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Using Build Profiles to create multiple outputs
This short video provides a demonstration of how you can configure a project to create multiple outputs from a single source, with each output driven by a separate options defined in the Build Profile. (3 minutes)
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Benefits of using Document! X
Using Document! X as your documentation tool immediately delivers the following benefits:
- Documentation can be built by Document! X in moments, reducing the amount of manual effort involved in creating a documentation set to virtually zero;
- The Visual Comment Editor integrated with Visual Studio dramatically simplifies the process of documenting in source code and gives the developer a view of the whole documentation page which makes it easy to spot gaps in the documentation and typos;
- The documentation generated by Document! X is accurate and always up to date. Creating the same documentation manually is error prone and very labor intensive;
- Documentation for the assembly you have documented is immediately available in Visual Studio using F1 or the Dynamic Help window;
- Producing a documentation set for your .NET assembly makes it more maintainable as there is a structured reference to accompany the source code and API;
Live Examples
These companies are some of the many that use Document! X to generate their help content:
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