.NET Reference Documentation Fundamentals

Create an Empty Project

Creating an empty project creates a project without any content. You can customize its settings according to your needs.

To create an empty project:

1. Click the Application Button at the upper-left of the Ribbon Menu.
2. Click New and then select Empty Project.
   
   
3. Enter a project name in the Project Name field.

   The project is created in the default directory, which is configurable in the Options Editor (Paths page). However, you can optionally choose a specific directory to save your project by browsing the Project Directory field.

4. Click Create.

The new empty project is created and opened for edit. You can now add the .NET Assemblies that you would like to document:

1. Click Add .NET Assembly on the Project tab.

   

2. In the .NET Assembly window, select the .NET assembly(s) to document.
   

NOTE: The selected .NET assembly(s) is added to the Project Explorer under the Assemblies node.

3. Expand down through each assembly node to select individual namespaces or types in order to update. By default private and internal types are excluded.

A Content File is created and added to the project under the Content Files node for each .NET Assembly added to the project. You can use the Content File to author additional content in the pages that Document! X will automatically generate.

You can use the .NET XML comments feature to create documentation content in source code. Document! X supports all of the standard .NET XML comment tags.

You can either author .NET XML comments manually in the source code editor or make use of the Document! X Visual Comment Editor integrated directly with Visual Studio 2017, 2019, and 2022:

1. Open the source code file that you wish to author documentation XML comments for (C#, VB.NET and C++ supported).
2. Click the Edit Documentation button on the main Visual Studio toolbar.
3. A Document! X Visual Comment Editor window opens. The tree on the left side allows you to select the code elements in the code file - select a code element and you can edit the documentation directly in the right side of the editor. Content that you author is written back to your source code as standard .NET XML comments.

If you would like to supplement the content of the pages automatically generated by Document! X and HelpStudio outside of the source code, you can do so using the Document! X and HelpStudio Content File Editor.

The Content File Editor allows you to review and author content for any item for which a reference documentation page is generated.

To open the Content File Editor:

1. Expand the Content Files node on the Project Explorer.
2. Locate the Content File for the item you wish to author content for.
3. Right-click the Content File and select Edit.
4. The Content File opened for editing. The tree on the left side of the editor shows you a hierarchical view of the item you are documenting.
5. Drill down and select an item from the tree, the related documentation pages are shown on the right side of the editor.
6. Select a specific content type from the toolbar/vertical menu to edit a specific type of content, for example, Summary, See Also, and Keywords.
7. Type directly in the editable portions of the page on the right side of the editor.

Conceptual information is a key part of reference documentation, providing a high level introduction, tutorials, or other conceptual information. You can easily create conceptual topics in HelpStudio.

1. Click the New Topic button on the Project tab or use the Ctrl+T shortcut key.
2. The new Topic will be created in the currently-selected Topic Category on the Project Explorer (or under the (Un-categorized) node if no category is selected) and will be opened for edit.

   

3. Enter your conceptual content directly in the editable area of the Topic Editor.

You can find more information on Topic Editing in the Topic Editor topic.

The settings that govern .NET documentation generation are defined in the Build Profile editor. In a new project there is a single Build Profile but you can define many build profiles if you want to create multiple outputs with different settings.

To edit .NET documentation settings:

1. On the Project Explorer, expand the Build Profiles node.
2. Double-click the required Build Profile to edit the properties.
   Alternatively, you can also right-click the required Build Profile and select Edit to open the Build Profile editor.

In the Build Profile editor, you can find the various .NET Settings pages under the Reference Documentation section.

An essential part of delivering a complete documentation set is ensuring that all the items have been documented. Document! X includes the Undocumented Items tool to quickly and easily identify undocumented items.

1. On the Tools tab, select the Undocumented Items option.
2. Select the profile in the Project Profile field for which you want to find the undocumented items.
   If your project contains only one Build Profile then it appears in the Project Profile field by default.
3. Select Item Types, for example, Class, Method, Schema, and Column, that you want to check for undocumented items.
4. Select Content Types to indicate the items that must be considered documented (just Summary by default).
5. Select the Content Sources that should be used when checking for content.
6. Select Execute. Any undocumented items will be listed in the results grid.

Click the Build button on the Project tab to build your .NET reference documentation.

By default the generated documentation is integrated with Visual Studio on the local machine. Refer to the Deployment topic for more information on how to deploy your documentation to other machines.