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.
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.
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 Class Overview Page
Overview of the class, including an automatically generated Object Relationship Diagram, Inheritance Hierarchy and Syntax in multiple .NET languages.
Lightbox Members Page
Type members page, listing the methods, properties, fields, events and extension methods implemented by this type.
Lightbox Constructor Overload Page
Page for a specific constructor overload, including a link to the method summary page listing other overloads.
Lightbox Overloaded Method Page
Page for an overloaded method, listing the defined overloads.
Lightbox Enumeration Page
Enumeration overview page, listing the enumeration members.
Lightbox Namespace Overview Page
Namespace overview page, listing the classes, structures, interfaces, delegates and enumerations defined in the namespace.
Lightbox Namespace Hierarchy Page
Namespace hierarchy documenting the inheritance hierarchy of all types defined in the namespace.
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.
Lightbox Content File Editor (.NET Documentation)
In combination with, or as an alternative to authoring content in source comments (.NET documentation illustrated here), create and maintain documentation content using the Document! X Content File Editor.
Lightbox Content File Editor (Database Documentation)
In combination with, or as an alternative to authoring content in source comments (Database documentation illustrated here), create and maintain documentation content using the Document! X Content File Editor.
Lightbox Source comments always visible
The Document! X Content File editor shows you the source comments ( .NET Xml format source comments, COM HelpStrings, XSD Annotations, Web Service Descriptions, SQL/T-SQL/PL-SQL Source Comments, Javadoc comments, JsDoc comments) whilst you are editing (.NET is shown here), 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 Object Model Digrams
The generated documentation for classes and structures in .NET, Java, COM and Javascript documentation 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 components.
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.
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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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.
Lightbox Browser Help
Browser Help output is viewable directly in the web browser, so is the ideal format for publishing documentation on a web site or intranet site. The browser help output includes a Table of Contents, Index and Full Text Search.
Lightbox Tablet and Mobile Support
The automatically generated responsive support allows you to generate a single output that automatically adapts to the device profile; delivering an optimal browsing experience for Desktop, Tablet and Mobile from a single output. Tablet and Mobile devices benefit from buttonized links, a button based fly out Table of Contents and other automatic features that dramatically improve the end user experience.
Lightbox Html Help 1.x (CHM)
Html Help 1.x (CHM) is the Microsoft Windows compiled help file format. When building to CHM, the output is a single file that can be deployed to, and viewed on, any machine with Windows installed. The CHM viewer includes a Table of Contents, Index and Full Text Search.
Lightbox Microsoft Help Viewer
Microsoft Help Viewer is the help technology used by Visual Studio 2010-2015. Building Microsoft Help Viewer output and integrating your documentation with Microsoft Help Viewer ensures that help for the assemblies you document is only ever an F1 key press away to Visual Studio users.
Lightbox Publish to network path, ftp, Azure and IIS
Your built documentation can be automatically published to a range of locations; a network path, ftp server, Azure web site or IIS (Internet Information Services) Server. Publishing recongizes which files have changed in the last build, so publishing is quick and minimizes network traffic.
Lightbox Community Features
The generated output can be automatically integrated with a range of Community Providers (Facebook, Disqus, Livefyre or SolidOpinion) allowing you to include rich community features in your help systems.
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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