Creating help file for PB.NET assembly

[former_member329524]

Hello, all

Can anyone recommend me a easy-to-use tool, which can generate a detailed help file for PB.NET assembly consumers?

I know there are tools for this for VS, but I am not familiar with any for PB.NET

[former_member190719 · Accepted solution]

Take a look at SandCastle Help File Builder.  It works by doing reflection on the generated assembly, so it doesn't care what is was created with.

I ran it on a visual assembly I created in PB.Net and got some pretty slick looking output:

[former_member329524 · Accepted solution]

Thank you, Bruce

Is there a  way to add XML documentation into the PB.NET code, so it would show in the finalized document?

[former_member190719 · Accepted solution]

Is there a  way to add XML documentation into the PB.NET code, so it would show in the finalized document?

Not that I know of.  I believe I tried it when PB.Net first came out and filed an enhancement request to get it supported.

That being said, I'm not such a big fan of that approach anymore.  Pursuant to the original Code Complete, we used to use tools like PBCommenter (available from Sybase's CodeXchagne) to put in block comments at the beginning of every script that described the method, arguments, purpose, etc.

In the latest version of Code Complete, the main difference is that the author makes a complete reversal on that recommendation.  We found similar issues after a while.  The quality of the original comments was often inadequate and the information usually became dated quite quickly but was never updated.

In addition, the approach might make sense in a shop where one developer is largely responsible for a particular application.  In the application I've been responsible for lately, there have been a couple of dozen developers involved, and the quality and style of comments varied widely.

Now days all we keep in the code (for a header) is a revision history.