Document! X fully supports documentation of compiled COM components, controls or Type Libraries, created using any programming language.
If you have already defined HelpStrings in your COM Component or Type Library, Document! X can use them as summary text for the generated documentation and you can view the HelpStrings while you are editing the spot areas that need expansion and avoid duplication.
Create a New COM Reference Documentation 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:
The project is created at 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.
The new empty documentation project is created and opens for edit. You can now add the COM Components that you would like to document:
The selected COM Component(s) are added to the Project Explorer under the COM Components node. You can expand down through each COM Component node to select/deselect individual types in order to include / exclude them from the generated output; by default private types are excluded (deselected). Repeat the procedure above if you would like to add additional COM Components to the project.
A Content File is created and added to the project under the Content Files node for each COM Component you add to the project. You can use this Content File to author additional content in the pages that Document! X automatically generates.
Author additional reference content
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:
Add Conceptual Topics
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 Document! X.
You can find more information on Topic Editing in the Topic Editor topic.
Change COM Documentation Settings
The settings that govern COM 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 COM documentation settings:
In the Build Profile editor, you can find the COM Settings page under the Reference Documentation section.
You can change the Template used for COM documentation (which defines the look and feel of generated pages) on the Templates page.
Identify Undocumented Items
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.
Build and Deploy COM Reference Documentation
Click the Build button on the Project tab to build your COM reference documentation.
By default the generated documentation is registered on the local machine so that F1 from a COM development tool when using a documented component automatically opens the correct help page. Refer to the Deployment topic for more information on how to deploy your documentation to other machines.