Creating MSDN like documentation for .Net Projects using SandCastle

The days of NDoc are over (in my opinion)! But in fairness to NDoc, this is really a great tool for generating documentation for .Net Projects ever since the SandCastle was not yet born. Today I’d downloaded this tool from Codeplex
and start working on it. Good thing there is a GUI available so I can start my QuickSaaS documentation in seconds using SandCastle. They also provided libraries, (dlls and exes) so geek programmer can work using DOS commands and also can integrate SandCastle to Nant Task.

Sandcastle produces accurate, MSDN style, comprehensive documentation by reflecting over the source assemblies and optionally integrating XML Documentation Comments. Sandcastle has the following key features:

• Works with or without authored comments
• Supports Generics and .NET
• Can customize the design of generated help file (Hana, VS2005, Prototype as defaults)
• Can generate several type of documentation (CHM, HTML, Hxs)

Here are some screenshots while I’m working with SandCastle

Figure 1: SandCastle GUI

Figure 2: Generated File Structure

Figure 3: Generated CHM on Contents tab

Figure 4: Generated CHM on Index tab

Figure 5: Generated CHM on Search Tab

Conclusion:

This is a very great tool, but they should think for a new logo! Every software product that is on the market should have the documentation of their API especially for those open-source and public/service projects. And we are lucky enough that the people behind this development gave us this freely. Another good point is they have this console application so I can use my NAnt task and automate the generation of documentation, just like in my case every build of QuickSaaS.