Document! X Info Pages:

Document! X for COM (ActiveX) Documentation

Automated COM Documentation Tool + WYSIWYG Authoring Environment

Document! X delivers the best of both worlds by seamlessly combining automatic documentation of compiled COM components, controls or Type Libraries with a full WYSIWYG authoring environment. The generated COM documentation is an accurate and comprehensive documentation set for your components covering classes, structs, interfaces, methods, properties and events.

Document! X will use any existing COM HelpString attributes (the descriptive attributes compiled into the component for Intellisense tooltips) where available. If you have defined Help Context IDs for your COM Components members, Document! X will ensure that all topics are given matching Context IDs such that context sensitive help called when the component is being used will invoke the correct help topic.

Download a Free Trial Version

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.

Live Samples

Content Authoring Options

If you have already defined HelpStrings in your COM Component or Type Library, Document! X can use them as summary text for the generated documentation and you can view the HelpStrings whilst you are editing to spot areas that need expansion and avoid duplication.

You can choose to author content in your component HelpString attributes, and/or using the rich authoring environment of the Document! X Content File editor. This flexibility allows you to include basic descriptive documentation in the source code and use the rich Document! X Content File editor to author extended content.

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 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).

View this Movie

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)

View this Movie

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)

View this Movie

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)

View this Movie

More Movies

Single Source Build and Publish

Your documentation projects can be built to Browser Help, CHM (Html Help 1.x) or Microsoft Help Viewer (Visual Studio® 2010-2019). All of the specific requirements for the different output formats are handled for your automatically and you can build all outputs from a single project. Automatic publishing makes it quick and simple to deploy the generated output to your web site, ftp server or network location.

Documentation style and functionality

COM documentation templates are provided reflecting the Visual Studio 2008 and 2012 documentation styles. Documentation you generate will be familiar in structure, layout, style and functionality to your COM developers.

Customization

The template based configuration that Document! X is based on makes it easy to:

  • Create new comment types for use in source code comments;
  • Adapt existing templates to match your existing corporate style and color scheme;
  • Customize Table of Contents definitions according to your requirements;
  • Fine tune the standard phrases and terminology used by Document! X to match your standards.

Authoring examples

The easy to use Example code designer included in the Content Editors makes adding multi-language examples a breeze. In-line or linked examples can be created and example code is automatically colorized in the generated output.

Localization

Document! X supports several different languages (English, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Russian)  for the phrases used in the generated output. All of the phrases and terminology in the generated output can be configured according to preference.

Document! X allows you to author content for multiple languages within a single project, showing you an embedded tip for the primary locale content when you are authoring in the Content File Editor for a secondary locale. If you use the Document! X and HelpStudio bundle you can export and import your localized content in XLIFF format; the industry standard for sending and receiving translation content from translation providers.

Download a Free Trial Version