In vb.net I can write an XML documentation by using some tags, like the following
'''<summary>
''' Hello there!
'''</summary>
In Java, I simply can export my Javadoc documentation in a single click (it generates an Html file).
Is there a way to do something similar in vb.net?
There are several tools that can generate a documentation in HTML or other formats out of the XML comments. Some of them:
VSdocman - the tool for generating API documentation from C# and VB projects. It can generate multiple formats, including HTML, CHM, PDF, Docx and others. It also provides WYSIWYG XML comments editor in Visual Studio. It is a commercial product and I'm the author.
Sandcastle Help File Builder - a set of tools that are used to create help files for managed class libraries containing both conceptual and API reference topics. Free.
DocFX - An extensible and scalable static documentation generator. Free.
Related
Subject: I am rewriting an extension for special language. It's like XML with embedded C#, JS and CSS.
Problem: I used external extension API as C# formatter, but now it's deprecated and even removed from marketplace because OmniSharp C# extension now covers all the needs of formatting. But I didn't find any text formatting in the code of this extension to request for similar API.
Question: what is best way to format pieces of text as C# inside VSCode extension? Or is there any free JS library for formatting actual version of C# language?
I'm new to office development and want to create a simple application that :
opens a word 2007-2010-2013 template.
reads each and every placeholder.
fills each one with the appropriate data.
However, how can I create a placeholder in a word template ?
How can I list placeholders and fill them using VB 2013 ?
Reading and writing word documents can be done in multiple ways. The easiest is probably from Inside Word itself. Microsoft provides a package called Visual Studio Tools for Office which can be used to integrate a plugin directly into word itself. You're probably looking for the Word Content Controls feature. And that could be used with XML data binding.
You can also host Word in your own application and then interact directly with the loaded document using the Office Primary Interop Assemblies. These managed classes are a wrapper around the COM objects that Office exposes. The XML data binding features are available through PIO as well. Look at the Word XML example which can be downloaded from this samples page. Primary interop assemblies are only supported in Interactive applications. Microsoft does not support running Office applications from a server/service application.
If you can limit yourself to the new XML Document standard you can extract the content from the document as XML and manipulate these directly (requires quite a bit of knowledge about the Word Document structure). The Packaging class structure provided by the .NET framework contains everything needed to extract the document parts, once extracted it's simple XML. Or you could use an open source wrapper around the XML document format, such as the open source DocX library. A template field could simply be a special text like {{TEMPLATE FIELD:FieldName}}.
There are also a number of commercial libraries available, some with built-in mail-merge features. I personally have good experience with Aspose.Words. Their documentation on Mailmerges can be found here.
I'm part of team working on SDK that is exposed with several programming languages - currently ObjC, C#, ActionScript, Java (Android) and later we'll have even more languages.
We want to have documentation which is made up of two parts:
Human readable documentation
API Reference
There are links between the two parts: from human readable docs we have links to specific classes or methods and from the API reference we may link to a document that explain the context in which the class or method is used.
We are currently use a combination of sphinx for human readable documentation and language specific tools for API such as doxygen or asdoc
I saw in LeapMotion they were able to generate a complete documentation for multiple programming-language (not human language) with cross links between programming-languages.
The Question
Does someone know how to accomplish such documentation system in a way we'll not have to duplicate each change in human readable docs to every language and have cross links between the languages?
I put together the Leap Motion documentation. I use Sphinx to create the package of docs and Breathe, a Sphinx plug-in, to basically import XML files generated by Doxygen into the Sphinx project for the doxygenated API references (C++, C#, Java, and Objective-C). For links from the so-called "human-readable" pages to the API references, I generate RST substitutions from the .tag files which Doxygen will generate for you. Links from the API reference to the "human-readable" pages are normal, relative hyperlinks (which I should add more of).
I use the conditional content features of Sphinx to generate a separate set of docs (both "human-readable" and API) for each programming language. Thus these articles can be customized for each programming language where needed and have the correct code examples for the current language. Because each doc set has the same structure, it isn't hard to switch from one language to another.
I did add some custom JavaScript to the page templates to help switch between languages.
tl;dr: Sphinx, Breathe, Doxygen and a small amount of custom JavaScript.
If you would like to discuss this further, you can post a question to our (Leap Motion) developer forum. I'll see it (Stackoverflow isn't the proper place for an ongoing discussion).
Hi Ido Ran,
Tools which you've specified are best in industry for documentation purpose,I am afraid there is no such tool yet which could provide both human and as well as API reference.Out of all my personal best is doxygen which is slighly of multi-use (human and API)..Hope this helps.
I am brandnew to PDF Generation or rendering but have a project to, create a PDF Template system that allows users to save Template to Database,
and later generate a PDF document using the template and values from my database.
Language to use C#
Questions
a) Is there a PDF tool out there that can help me with this and documentation I can study to learn of this?
b) Are there free tools out there for this?
c) How do I create a PDF Template? XML?
Thanks in Advance!
You should have a look at xsl:fo.
Apache has a tool which might be helpful.
You can use PHP to create and modify PDFs. (Everything below is completely free.)
Here are two extensive tutorials on generating PDFs in PHP:
http://blog.eirikhoem.net/index.php/2008/04/28/populate-pdf-templates-with-php-fpdf-fpdi/
http://www.astahost.com/info.php/create-pdf-php_t4972.html
You can use the FPDF library located here to handle generating PDFs based off of templates.
If You are using Java, you could try Docmosis or JODReports - they work from templates and can produce PDF output dynamically based on data and those templates. Depending on your template requirements, you might also be able to use Jasper Reports or Apache POI. All have free versions.
If you are looking for an instant solution, take a look on http://pdfnow.com . You can upload your XSL/FO-Templates and simply generate PDF-Templates with a simple webservice call.
I would give a shot to jsreport. You can install it on premise for free or use it online. It supports html -> pdf transformation using phantomjs or xml -> pdf transformation using apache fop.
The idea is that first you create report template using javascript templating engines like handlebars in jsreport studio and then you get back pdf by calling jsreport api.
If you are in c# there is jsreport c# sdk for it.
Note: I am the author of jsreport
I am looking for some good tools (free or paid, though free tool is always preferred)
for doing following operations on word doc files:
Manipulation of doc/docx/text files (like replacing some placeholders with DB values) as well as
converts doc files to .pdf
Because, I will be using this tool in my WCF service library,
So I am looking for a code library and not for a GUI based product.
Please share your experience regarding same.
Thank you!
Aspose has a decent collection of MS Office and PDF manipulation libraries.
Aspose Homepage
On the off chance that you're only looking for PDFs for viewing or archival purposes, you could also setup a PDF print driver and print your office files into a given location using Automation. You could also edit Office files through Automation although this may be tedious.
VSTO would give you access to the save as PDF from the Office applications.
Please see my answer to a related question on SO where I recommend a number of ways to convert your Word document to a format that is more easy to manipulate programmatically (using XSL-FO).