Sandcastle Help File Builder Download

The Sandcastle Help File Builder standalone GUI provides an environment in which you can edit theproperties that control the features and appearance of the compiled help file. In addition, it lets you managevarious files associated with the help project. A Visual Studio package is also available. For a comparisonof features and where to find them, see the Visual Studio Integration Package topics.

In order to be built correctly, the selected presentation style must support all of the selected help file output formats. Certain styles may be written for a specific help file formats or, as in the case of the Prototype and Hana styles, have been deprecated and have not been updated to support later file formats such as MS Help Viewer. Either unselect the unsupported format(s) or choose a different presentation style that does support the selected format(s).

Sandcastle Help File Builder Download

Download File: https://urlgoal.com/2wZgdp

All other project types should work. If all else fails, try adding the assembly and XML comments files directly. I suppose it's possible the Express editions use diffent project type IDs. If you can send me the solution file and project file, I can take a look at them and see why it isn't finding the targets. My e-mail address is in the About box in the standalone GUI and in the footer of the pages in the help file.

I was using sandcastle to generate help for my project in visual studio 2008. When i change my project to visual studio 2010 and change the project .NET version to .NET 4.0 i got this problem with Sandcastel. I can't understand why sandcastel is using C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v3.5\MSBuild.exeand not C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0\MSBuild.exe thinking that i specified as framework version the v4.0.30319

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 documentation files that are generated by compilers. The resulting HTML files are then used as input to tools such as the HTML Help Workshop to produce compiled help for distribution with the corresponding computer program.

Reference documentation is generated automatically for managed Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) from reflection data and XML documentation comments. A "doc model" XSL transformation, provided by the chosen presentation style, is applied to define the files that will be generated. Sandcastle provides a reference build component stack (sandcastle.config) that builds in-memory indexes of the data, resolves shared content and links, and uses XSL to generate the final HTML output.

For example, the typical Help 1.x build process starts by running MrefBuilder.exe to produce an XML reflection file for one or more assemblies. The reflection file is then processed by the XslTransform.exe tool multiple times to apply various XSL transformations that add data such as a "doc model" and optional version information. Next, an XML-based topic manifest is generated and used by the BuildAssembler.exe program, which generates HTML topic files from the reflection data and XML documentation comments. An XML-based table of contents (TOC) file is generated and used by CHMBuilder.exe, along with the HTML files produced by BuildAssembler, to generate HTML Help Workshop project, index and TOC files. Finally, the HTML Help workshop is used to generate a compiled help file (.chm).

See the help file supplied with the help file builder for more information on how to use it. A FAQ is included in the help file that should answer most of the common questions and provide solutions to most of the common issues encountered by users of the help file builder.

To edit a namespace summary, select the namespace in the list and edit the comments in the text box at the bottom of the form. The comments can include HTML markup (i.e. bolding, e-mail links, etc). If no summary is defined, a red warning note will appear for the namespace on the root namespaces page and above the namespace content in the help page for the namespace itself. When this form is opened, it scans the documentation assemblies for new namespaces and adds them to the list if it finds any. If you build a help file without updating the namespace list, any unknown namespaces will appear in the help file but they will also contain a red warning message indicating that the namespace summary is missing.

Be aware that if an option is selected that produces a website, the output folder will be cleared of all of its current content before the web site content is copied to it. When producing a help file alone, the output folder is not cleared. When producing a website, the following additional files are copied to the root of the output folder.

The help file builder scans each HTML file for several tags and specially formatted comments that allow you to define the title and sort order of the table of content entries as well as which one should be the default topic. The tags can be added to the files manually or you can use the

Messages are written to the log file indicating how the link was resolved. If no matches are found, a message appears in the log stating that the identifier could not be found and it will be rendered in bold rather than as a link in the help file as is the case with the second example. If a single best match is found, the log message indicates the fully qualified name that was matched and the tag is converted to a link to the associated page in the help file. If multiple matches are found, the log will include a list of all fully qualified names that contained the identifier and the first entry found will be used as the target of the hyperlink.

How the files are encoded is very important if they contain extended characters. To ensure that the help file builder and the Sandcastle tools properly interpret the encoding within the files, it is best to save the files such that they contain byte order marks at the start of the file for Unicode encoded formats as well as an XML header tag that specifies the correct encoding. In the absence of byte order marks, the encoding in the XML header tag ensures that the file is still interpreted correctly. The supplied default language resource files contain examples of this.

Once a build has finished, you can use the

The help file builder project can be added to the solution file so that it can be checked into source control or opened from within Visual Studio. I like to add it as a solution item by right clicking on the solution name in the Solution Explorer, selecting

You can also have Visual Studio open the help file builder project using the GUI tool rather than its default text editor. To do so, right click on the help file builder project and select

In a solution with multiple projects that are documented by the same help file builder project, the post-build event should be defined on the last project built by Visual Studio. If the projects are documented individually, you can place a post-build event on each one.

It is also possible to specify project option overrides via the command line and to use a response file to contain a complex list of projects and option overrides to build one or more help files. See the

All fully qualified paths in the affected properties in projects created by prior versions of the help file builder will become relative paths automatically when opened in the latest version. If you need a fixed path, expand the property and set the IsFixedPath property to true so that it is saved as an absolute rather than a relative path.

Sandcastle is composed of two separate parts that work together: the Sandcastle tools and the Sandcastle Help File Builder. The Sandcastle tools are used to create help files for managed class libraries containing both conceptual and API reference topics. 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. Conceptual topics are created by converting XML documents that you author containing Microsoft Assistance Markup Language (MAML). The Sandcastle tools are command-line based and have no GUI front-end, project management features, or an automated build process. 2990b30de8