Document! X Info Pages:

Document! X for Visual Studio Developers

Automated Documentation Tool + WYSIWYG Authoring Environment

Document! X delivers the best of both worlds by seamlessly combining automated documentation generation with a full WYSIWYG authoring environment and Visual Studio Integrated Comment Editor. The generated output is an accurate and comprehensive documentation set for one or more .NET Assemblies (C#, VB.NET, F#, C++/CLI or other .NET language), Web Services (REST or SOAP), XSD Schemas, Database Schemas (SQL Server, Access, Oracle or other OLE DB), COM Components, Controls, Type Libraries, Java Projects or Javascript Libraries.

Document! X integrates with Visual Studio® 2010-2019 to provide you with all the tools you need to author and build documentation for your Visual Studio solutions.

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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.

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

You can choose to author content in the Document! X Content File editor. Content can be configured to extend (combine with) or override any existing source comments according to your preference. This approach allows you to include basic documentation in the source code and use the rich Document! X Content File editor to supplement it (e.g. with examples, more detailed descriptions etc.).

The Document! X Content File editor will show you the 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.

Demonstration Movies

These short movies provide a great way to discover what can be achieved using Document! X.

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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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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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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More Movies

Single Source Build and Publish

Your documentation projects can be generated to Browser Help, CHM (Html Help 1.x), Help 2.x (Visual Studio 2002-2008) or Microsoft Help Viewer (Visual Studio® 2010-2019). 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

Templates are provided for the Visual Studio documentation styles, so that users of the documentation you produce will be familiar with the structure, layout, style and functionality.

Generated documentation supports language filtering so that any language specific reference information such as syntax tables and examples will be filtered according to the chosen language(s). So if for example your users are programming in C#, they can choose to view shown the C# syntax definition and examples. The language filtering functionality implemented by Document! X is 'sticky', such that a language preference is preserved when navigating between pages.

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.

Visual Studio Help integration

F1 support is automatically generated, so your assembly documentation is only ever a keypress away for the developers using it.

Document! X can automatically 'Plug-In' the generated Microsoft Help 2.x (Visual Studio 2002-2008) or Microsoft Help Viewer (Visual Studio® 2010-2019) file to the Visual Studio help collection on the local machine so that the generated Table of Contents and Index are merged into the Visual Studio help collection (this option is set on the 'Help Compiler Options' page of the Document! X Project Editor).

Document! X also ships with a command line tool to assist in registering Microsoft Help 2.x files on other machines, and generates .bat files for registration and un-registration automatically.

XML Comment file generation

If your assembly is written in a .NET language that does not generate an XML documentation file during compile, you will find that when using the assembly in Visual Studio Intellisense does not display a description. Document! X solves this problem by optionally generating an XML Comment file as part of the documentation build process - this enables descriptions in both Intellisense and the Object Browser.

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.

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