Sandcastle Help File Builder Tutorial

Sandcastle Help File Builder.

Sandcastle help file builder tutorial. Sandcastle Help File Builder Step #1 - It is important that you check installed programs and make sure you uninstall any version previous to 2.7. You don't need to use Sandcastle Help File Builder with Help+Manual, and it is also not possible to do so. Creating a demo project Creating a project.

Creating the actual topic files is just a matter of entering the content using a text editor. A Visual Studio integration package is also available for it so that help projects can be created and managed. Download and install SHFB on your build server.

Out of the box, Sandcastle is command line driven and kind of a pain to deal with, so I highly recommend the very easy to use Sandcastle Help File Builder (SHFB) application also hosted on CodePlex. The help file builder is written by Eric Woodruff and consists of a GUI and a project build system that act as front ends to the Sandcastle tools and help compilers produced by Microsoft. Sandcastle Help File Builder Open the Sandcastle Help File Builder (SHFB) from your Start -> Program Files.

Sandcastle is a set of command line programs, configuration files, build components and XSLT files that work together to convert XML-based documentation into help topics that are fit for viewing in a help system.Sandcastle is typically used to automatically generate web-ready, XML-compliant HTML documentation in one of three built-in presentation styles from .NET assemblies and XML. API reference topics are created by combining the XML comments that are embedded in your source code with the syntax and structure of the types which is acquired by reflecting against the associated .NET Framework assemblies. However, Sandcastle Help File Builder (SHFB) has an excellent feature, where it takes this output and actually makes it useful.

Define the Help file Format within the HelpFileFormat Property in the. The solution has xml comments and I get no errors at all. The primary executable is named SandcastleBuilder.exe.

Next use the Project Explorer to add the assembly of the application you are documenting;. Sandcastle Builder really is, hands-down, THE deepest idle game out there, both in mechanics and in scale. The actual Sandcastle Help File Builder installation is launched as a separate installer-- be sure to do this!.

Click Save to create the new project. Sandcastle Help File Builder – the GUI. Can any one explain how do I register the help file to VS05 so that I can use context sensitive help (F1) when writing code that uses my class library?.

Darrell Norton, MVP Darrell Norton's Blog Please click "Mark as Answer" if this helped you. Any unused images are omitted. It generates documentation that has a similar GUI to NDoc.

To proceed with the documentation we will also need to create an XML file for the project. Start by opening the Sandcastle Help File Builder and create a new project using any suitable name, e.g. Understand it and use it, is to use XML Documentation and SandCastle.

For every project in your Visual Studio solution for which you want documentation generated, go to the Project Properties dialog in the “Build” section and select (check) the “XML Documentation File” option in the. This was necessary to facilitate some of the other changes. I don’t want to reinvent the whell therefore, I forward you to some other sites.

The Sandcastle Help File Builder standalone GUI provides an environment in which you can edit the properties that control the features and appearance of the compiled help file. On some systems, the content of the ZIP file is blocked and the installer may fail to run. The use of Sandcastle can be simplified using a tool named, "Sandcastle Help File Builder" (SHFB), developed by Eric Woodruff.

Please note that you cannot use the independent Sandcastle Help File Builder system or its configuration. The next steps are to open the GUI (SandCastel Help File Builder) and create a new project. Select or create the new folder where you want to generate new help document.

A Visual Studio integration package is also available for it so that help projects can be created and managed. How to use Sandcastle Help File Builder to autogenerate documentation I use to document my functions etc. These sites can explain the next steps certainly better than I can.

You should find the gui in your start menu > programs. Apparently the installer will not update things correctly. Select File | New Project.

The Sandcastle Help File Builder was created to fill in the gaps, provide the missing NDoc-like features that are used most often, and provide standalone GUI and command line based tools to build a help file in an automated fashion. Sandcastle is a command line tool to create MSDN-style documentation from .NET assemblies and their XML comment files. Sandcastleヘルプファイルビルダーのインストールを行いますので、 Install SHFBボタンを押下→ウィザードに従って、インストール→Finishボタンを押下して、ウィザードを閉じるとNextボタン押下の指示に従って、Nextボタンを押下.

With the integrated XML-comments. You will be able to see File builder application opened. Microsoft is no longer releasing new versions of Sandcastle (but that doesn't prevent it from working just fine).

Creating a help file from them requires several configuration files and the Sandcastle tools. If you don’t install it you may get either poor or even faulty rendering of your output, possibly without realizing it. A .NET Programmer's Guide to Documenting.

Once done, the Project Explorer Window and the Project Properties Window will be opened for you. It can also generate a single help file from multiple. The Sandcastle Tools and Sandcastle Help File Builder have been merged into a single common folder structure.

Sandcastle is a tool developed by Microsoft which builds MSDN-style help files by using reflection and XML comments from the source code of a project. It's rumored to be incredibly deep and awesome, but you try it and it just confuses the fuck out of you. 13 September 10.

However, this isn’t very useful as it is simply all the pages which are later compiled in the CHM. The Getting Started link has a pretty good walkthrough on what you need to do to setup Sandcastle and the Sandcastle Help File Builder software. The SHFB Installation Instructions certainly mention this, but you might.

I get a chm file with "Namespace" at the top and none of my classes or the program.cs are represented in the chm. Look at the below snippet which will help you to create a new project. Launch SHFB (Sandcastle Help File Builder) and look around.

C> output the file. There is now an independent project called Sandcastle Help File Builder, developed and maintained on Codeplex by Eric Woodruff. Why play Sandcastle Builder?.

Go to Start menu and select Sandcastle Help Builder and click on Sandcastle Help File Builder GUI. The Sandcastle Styles package is a collection of patches to the core Sandcastle’s presentation component. See the Sandcastle MAML Guide for details on Microsoft Assistance Markup Language (MAML) which is used to create these topics.

In addition, it lets you manage various files associated with the help project. The most common release is 14.5.31.0, with over 98% of all installations currently using this version. HTML Help API Library File (Htmlhelp.lib) End-User License Agreement.

Help file is built, all images referenced by an image link are copied to the help file's .\Media folder. Within the Sandcastle Help File Builder select Project -> New Project from Visual Studio Project… – Open the .sln from which you built your XML Documentation in the previous step (VS Setup). Help for the HTML Help Viewer (Viewhlp.chm) A redistributable set of topics that provide help for the HTML Help viewer.

It's open source and free. · Hi zvin, Along with Eric and Ulrich's suggestions, please take a look at these two. Note The Sandcastle Help File Builder does not use a media content file directly.

Click OK to save it, and then click Set as Default to make it the default tool for opening the help file builder projects. The Sandcastle tools are used to create help files for managed class libraries containing both conceptual and API reference topics. Sandcastle Help File Builder.

The Sandcastle Help File Builder was created to fill in the gaps, provide the missing NDoc-like features that are used most often, and provide standalone GUI and command line based tools to build a help file in an automated fashion. Creating an XML file. The Sandcastle tools and the help compilers are not part of the help file builder and must be downloaded and installed separately.

Click on "Start a brand new project" and it will give you an option for where to save this document. Right-click on Document Sources and add either the .exe, .dll or the project file. If you are going to build a help file using Sandcastle alone, see the topics in the Conceptual Content File Types section.

Before extracting it, right click on the ZIP file, select Properties, and click on the Unblock button if it is present in the lower right corner of the General tab in the properties dialog. Then you take "Sandcastle Help File Builder" and c> build a nice website documentation with it. See the Sandcastle Help File Builder .3.6.0 Release Notes for details on all of the changes made to the Sandcastle Help File Builder and tools.

Take a look at the UI - there are lots of options available to customize the documentation generating process. Setting up TFS build for Sandcastle Help File Builder. In summary, it could be anything which may benefit anyone – possibilities could endless.

In this post I will describe the steps needed to setup TFS build that will generate documentation and drop it the output directory. Help+Manual actually performs similar tasks to Help File Builder, so it replaces its role in interaction with Sandcastle. The end-user license agreement (EULA) is part of the HTML Help.

I'm using the Sandcastle Help File Builder GUI, Sandcastle 07 Oct TCP and (managed) C++ in VS08. The problem is that I also don't get any documentation. In the Save As dialog box, select the folder in which to save the new project and enter its name.

C> c> Even in there help they show you how to sort of do it in a website c> but puting stuff in the web.config but then they state this. It can produce an HTML 1.x (.CHM) file, an HTML 2.x (HxS) file, or a website. I've used the SandCastle Help File Builder to execute against my solution file.

Files must appear in the content layout file in order to be compiled into the help file. If you see a. Hello I generated .chm file for my C# class library with Sandcastle March CTP and Sandcastle Help File Builder.

Enter the path to SandcastleBuilderGUI.exe for your system and enter something like "Sandcastle Help File Builder" for the friendly name. - The guided installer has a step that will install the Sandcastle Help File Builder for you, so you don’t have to download that yourself. The most effective way to document .NET code so that others can.

For demo purposes, we will be. We will first create a simple class library and add an Employee class. C> c> " c> c> Documenting Code in the App_Code Folder c>.

An archive of the CodePlex open source hosting site. The setup package generally installs about 66 files and is usually about 10.06 MB (10,547,912 bytes). I can vouch for Sandcastle Help File Builder.

Click Add to add a new program to the list. A basic HTML reference for Help authors. Ignore the properties window for now and right click on the Documentation Sources node in the Project Explorer.

When executing the example included within the CTP, in the output folder there is a subfolder called HTML. Not only does the tool make it easy to generate help files using a flexible graphical user interface (GUI), it also guides you through its installation and the installation of all required dependencies. These can be customized according to your needs.

Is there any tutorial available how to properly set up the Sandcastle Help File Builder to generate the documentation for Unity3D Projects?. Shown above is the help file builder's main form. Sandcastle Builder is the Dwarf Fortress of idle games;.

And open the *.sln. In theory, you could have a Builder project and generate a doc for each C# project and then have a master Builder project which documents everything. They cover the various file types that are used in the build process.

In the previous post I have briefly explained how to setup SHFB project in Visual Studio. Instead, images are managed as project file items and the media content file is created for you automatically at build. This guide aims to remedy that.

It works really well and you can document any number of assemblies within a Sandcastle Help File Builder project. -Define the Help file Format within the HelpFileFormat Property in the Project Properties Window within SHFB. Sandcastle Help File Builder is a software program developed by EWSoftware.

Michael Sorens produces the easy guide to the process that. See the Conceptual Content topics in the Sandcastle Help File Builder's help file for more information.