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C# : Frustrated by XML Comments...

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  • 12-07-2004 9:53am
    #1
    bonkey
    Registered Users Posts: 15,443 ✭✭✭✭


    Does anyone actually find the XML Code Commenting funcitonality in C# remotely useful?

    Having come to C# from Java, I was all enthused....the functionality looked like javadoc only better. Only that doesn't seem to be the case, and I'm wondering am I missing something, or is this going to require a sh1teload more work than I initially thought.

    Allow me to explain...

    if you're familiar with Javadoc, you know that its really easy to generate a full set of docs for your commented app. These will be structured just like the ones in the java documentation, complete with those lovely index pages for each class and whatnot, showing you all the properties and methods, complete with which are inherited, which are overridden, and all that. If you've an inherited method with no comments, the comments will be taken from the method inherited from and so on....

    All lovely stuff.

    But how the hell do I do the same in C#??? I've generated the "Comment Web Pages" from the Tools menu, and its the ugliest, most unuseable set of output I've seen in a long time. There is nothing distinguishing private from public from protected. The layout is dreadful. The HTML generated is a nightmare (e.g. if you have a multi-line desciription for an item, the item-text is not aligned with the first line of the description).

    Overall, its unuseable.

    Now, looking a bit deeper, it seems I can generate the XML for the code using the command-line coimpiler. Well, whoop-dee-fscking-do, but thats not a hell of a lot better.

    What I want is to be able to generate the same type of structured help file as one sees in the .Net help files for the .Net classes. Am I just being fooled by my memories of Javadoc being used to generate the Jave help, or is the equivalent actually doable in C#, and if so, how do I do it??? I've been digging around all morning, and can find absolutely nothing on this. All I can see is a lot of fanboy links saying how the C# XMLDoc is far superior to Javadoc because - gosh - you can do whatever you want with the generated XML.

    Well, great, but I don't see any benefit in every developer and his dog writing some widgets in order to produce what looks like the standard C# help format from their code comments.

    So surely I'm missing something? Surely there's a way to do this - either something built in that I'm overlooking, or some third-party widget which I can download (and/or buy) which will do this for me?

    Anyone got any suggestions???

    jc


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    #2
    bonkey
    Registered Users Posts: 15,443 ✭✭✭✭bonkey


    Hmmm.

    It looks like NDOC may be exactly the widget I was missing.

    jc


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