Sorry for any inconvenience this is causing at the moment. We will provide an update when everything is back to normal.

We loaded up Live Documenter and added the following .NET 2 libraries, chosen because they ship with XML comments, mscorlib, system and system.drawing. We then pointed it a the web export configuration file hit the go button and waited for 8 minutes. Yes that’s right 8 minutes to output some 24,ooo members. How long did the competition take? 50 minutes.

View the MSDN style web output from Live Documenter.

This was produced using our highly configurable export configuration files. We touched on these briefly in a previous post, feel free to download this one and use an application to unzip the contents to have a look.

To upgrade existing installations, simply download the latest version and run the installer.

Fixes in this release include:

• Fixes a problem that occurs when adding <code> elements to <para> elements
• Fixes an issue that meant top level <example> elements were not displayed
• Fixed a problem that occurs when the application parses unknown elements
• Fixed a problem that occurred while parsing the pre-formatted content from a <code> element
• Fixed an exception that occurred in very very large parameter lists
• Added a check to make sure SP1 of the v3.5 .NET framework is available to stop an exception thrown by WPF

By being a beta tester and helping us out, we will be giving away free copies of the Live Documenter v1.2 after it’s released. For more details and to register go to the registration form now.

In the past you would have to create a new project or switch between libraries, but with the new documentation projects and project management features. Managing which libraries are documented has become as easy as exporting your documentation with Live Documenter.

What are documentation projects?

Live Documenter projects allow you to add and remove libraries, set project specific settings such as which members should be filtered and where the documentation be published to.

And to save these settings to a project file which can easily be opened from your file system or through the Live Documenter interface.

How will documentation projects work?

After opening a solution, project or library you can see the add and remove toolbar icons are available. You can add a solution, project or file and it will merge the libraries together under a single documentation set.

New tool bar options

Remove shows you a list of assemblies in the documentation and allows you to remove them one by one.

Selecting an assembly to remove from the project

You will see the effects of adding and removing libraries immediately. After you have configured your documentation you can save this as a Live Documenter project file.

The project file also stores other information about your documentation and how you wish to view it. It stores the current build configuration being viewed, the filters being applied and where the documentation is being published to.

Documentation projects simplify how you manage the documentation for your projects by: allowing you to set up your projects documentation once, produce documentation from disconnected projects and solutions, and allowing important documentation specific settings to be stored.

What do you think of the new documentation projects?

The Live Documenter has always been about quick and easy and we have been working to make sure you don’t have to suffer another 40 minute export. Quick exports and the ability to see your documentation without waiting for the export to complete make the Live Documenter great.

Output Formats

Currently Live Documenter can export to Web (HTML/XHTML), XML, HTML Help 1, HTML Help 2 and MS Help Viewer. These are based on an XSLT/XML conversion process which allows greater flexibility over the output and styling. The first set of exporters are styled in the lightweight MSDN website style.

The web output is XHTML transitional but can be updated and extended easily to HTML 5. It is easy to style and customise (as are all the output formats).

The Process

One of the advantages of using the Live Documenter is that it is live, being able to see your documentation before its exported saves you time in the long run. So after you are happy with the documentation you can press that export button.

View your documentation live

When you click the export button you are presented with the export dialogue which gives you some very simple options. What is the output location, which members do you want to export and finally what kind of output would you like. All there is left to do is hit that Export button.

Select your output

You won’t have to wait to long.

Blink and you'll miss it

Web documentation done.

Web documentation

Technical Details

Export Configurations

Live Documenter will use a Live Documenter Export Configuration (LDEC) file to determine how your documentation will be exported. This file is ZIP compressed set of files, the most important of which is the export.config file. This XML file tells Live Documenter which XSLT stylesheet to use, which exporter to instantiate and what style sheets/images etc to output. Here is an example of the file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<export xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <name>Web Export: MSDN Lo Band Style</name>
    <description>A wesbite export of the documentation in the MSDN Lo Band web 
    style.</description>

    <author>The Box Software</author>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <exporter>web</exporter>
    <xslt>webexport.xslt</xslt>
    <screenshot>screenshot.jpg</schreenshot>

    <outputfiles>
        <file internal="styles/default.css" output="\styles\default.css" />
        <file internal="styles/images/" output="\styles\images\" />
    </outputfiles>
</export>

More details on how to create your own LDEC files will be published later.

Intermediate XML

Live Documenter produces an intermediate XML file which is rich with information about the types, syntax, references, and your comments. This file forms the basis for all the exporters.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<member id="25769951544" subId="" type="properties">
    <name safename="Namespace">Namespace</name>
    <namespace id="25769803776" name="TheBoxSoftware.Reflection">
        TheBoxSoftware.Reflection
    </namespace>
    <assembly file="TheBoxSoftware.Reflection.dll">
        TheBoxSoftware.Reflection
    </assembly>
    <summary>
        <text>Returns the namespace for the current class. This is obtained from the
	types metadata.</text>
    </summary>
    <syntaxblocks>
        <syntax language="C#">
	    <keyword>public</keyword>
	    <text> </text>
	    <keyword>string</keyword>
	    <text> </text>
	    <text>Namespace</text>
	    <text> {</text>
	    <text>
</text>
            <keyword>get</keyword><text>;</text><text>
	</text><keyword>set</keyword><text>;</text><text>
}</text></syntax>
    </syntaxblocks>
    <remarks>
        <para>
             <text>When the class </text><see id="25769951550">IsNested</see>
             <text> the namespace returned is the namespace of the enclosing type. 
             Where the class is nested multiple times each nested class is
             checked until one its containers defines a namespace and that is
             returned.</text>
        </para>
    </remarks>
</member>

We hope this is enough to whet your appetite. Keep checking back for more updates and information.

At present there is no commercial licensing for this product and that will be decided when the software is complete. The software will be complete when the exporting functionality is completed. At this point the full licensing model will be developed and published.

In the mean time please feel free to use the software in both commercial and non-commercial software. The current version v1.0.1 will always remain free for use.

Please accept our apologies for the delays in development, we hit an architectural issue with the exporting functionality. However that is now resolved, we are continuing to develop this functionality and are excited about the possibilities and implementation.

The Box Software is still working away behind the scenes on the export functionality. We are still looking at first quarter of this year release schedule. So over the next month or so you should start seeing some updates and previews on this website; and a notification via email when it is released for all our newsletter subscribers.

Version 1.0.1 has been released adding stability and a few enhancements, including better error reporting so we can iron out any issues you may have. A full list of all of the fixes and enhancements can be found at the end of this post. But now…

What’s coming up? Exporting.

We understand that some people still need to export documentation for clients and websites etc. So we are now hard at work implementing exporting. But we would really like to here what it is you think lacks on other documenters or that you would like to see or not see in ours. We haven’t been at it long but we got too excited and wanted you to see some of the first glimpse from exporting websites.

Export to web coming soon

Let us know what you think on Twitter, User Voice or good old email.

Version 1.0.1 of Live Documenter

You can download your copy straight away.

Version 1.0.1 changes

• Exception thrown when viewing projects using Microsoft Code Contracts
• Exception thrown in dutch locales (overlocalisation issue .NET WPF)
• Bug in back/forward navigation would occasionally lose your place
• Exception thrown attempting to load some unmanaged libraries
• Exception thrown when reading in some solutions (different version issue)
• Cannot close or cancel the error report dialogue
• Error after sending error report issue
• Preference dialogue disappears behind main window
• Entry is not reselected after projects have been built (automatic updating)
• Added basic tracing output for better support
• Open/Close menu options being greyed out after loading a unmanaged library
• Overloaded methods were not linked properly in the document
• Other minor tweaks and fixes