Released: GhostDoc v2018

Note to the GhostDoc v5 users: The v2018 requires a new license code. Users with License Protection or active Software Assurance subscription are eligible for a free upgrade. See the information at the bottom of this post for the details.

The v2018 release is packed with new and exciting features of which one particular is long awaited for – visual editing for XML comments – the?feature that makes XML documentation authoring a breeze!

New features

• Visual Editing for XML Comments
• New menu and VS command – Document Project – now can generate XML Comment templates for a whole project
• Support for C# 7.2 and VB 2017 syntax
• The base web help documentation themes are now frameless. Original frame-based themes still shipped under new names
• Support for Code Contracts when generating help documentation
• Support for the <inheritdoc /> tag – in the XML Comments as well as the generated help documentation
• Added VS IntelliSense file documentation output option
• Added support for regular expression support in Dictionaries – Summary Override – enables flexible summary generation
• New menu and VS command – Document File Header – allows generating/updating the file header without having to re-document the file
• Improved performance of the Document File/Type batch actions
• Introduced the Bug Bounty program – earn a license for helping us discover and fix bugs
• Retired MS Help 2 documentation output format
• GhostDoc Community edition now requires a one-time free Community License activation after 30 days of use
• There are now two GhostDoc EULAs – Commercial License and Community License

For the detailed list of v2018 changes see What’s New in GhostDoc v2018

To see new features by product edition see this page ? http://submain.com/ghostdoc/editions/

Visual Editing for XML Comments

The number one challenge authoring XML comments, according to our users, has been ensuring a well-formed XML that includes encoding HTML formatting tags, code samples, etc. If that is not painful enough, many of malformed XML issues don’t even show up until the help docs are generated.

And now we offer a solution to this! Visual editing makes it painless to insert tables, lists, pictures, links, source code samples, and other formatting directly in your XML doc comments.

This is a huge leap from plain XML comment maintenance. Now you have WYSIWYG editing and don’t have to worry about valid and compliant XML in your comments. And there is no longer need to look up the correct syntax of the XML comment section tags and format to use.

The visual comment editor allows you to create and edit comments directly within an editable preview of the generated documentation. Comments created with the visual editor are written back to your source code in standard XML format, properly encoded, when required.

You still can have GhostDoc auto-generate your XML doc template in the Visual Editor, and then you have a Word-like experience to continue editing your documentation.

The new Visual Editor is such a great improvement – we also included it with the GhostDoc Community Edition!

Themes are now frameless

We have updated the web documentation themes with a modern frameless design. The new themes also allow for the help documentation search locally not requiring the server side active component. The older frame-based themes are still included for compatibility with the new names.

<inheritdoc /> tag

Instead of copying and syncing the base member XML Comment summary for a type member, using?the <inheritdoc /> tag allows GhostDoc copying the documentation from base members into the final help documentation at the time the documentation is generated hence always rendering the latest copy of the base member docs.

Code Contracts

GhostDoc now will take your Code Contract XML Comment details and render them in the generated help documentation and Visual Editor. GhostDoc supports the following Code Contracts XML elements

• <ensures />
• <ensuresOnThrow />
• <requires />
• <invariant />
• <pure />

To create the XML Comment tags for Code Contracts, we recommend using the?CodeContracts tools for .NET

New output format – VS IntelliSense file

We added a new documentation output format – the IntelliSense file which is similar to that Visual Studio produces and GhostDoc users can also leverage of all the filtering built-in into the Build Help Documentation dialog as well as can generate it via the command line tool.

The VS IntelliSense format takes place of the MS Help 2 documentation output format that GhostDoc no longer supports.

Document Project and Document File Header

We must never say never – now GhostDoc has a new command to generate XML Comment templates for a whole project – Document Project.

Creating a file header used to be part of the Document File batch command and while it still is, we introduced the Document File Header command that allows generating and updating file header without having to re-document the whole file.

RegEx in Dictionaries – Summary Override

Using regular expressions can enable developers to do simple yet powerful things. Now you can use regular expressions in the Summary Override dictionary to improve the quality of the generated comment templates.

Here are two sample Summary Override entries:

New(?<pattern>(.|\n)*) -?Creates new {pattern}.
To(?<pattern>(.|\n)*) -?Converts to {pattern}.

These will create summary for NewCustomer as “Creates new Customer” and for ToModel as “Converts to Model”.

How do I try it?

Download the v2018 at http://submain.com/download/ghostdoc/

Feedback is what keeps us going!

Let us know what you think of the new version here ? http://submain.com/support/feedback/

Older version licenses

Note to the GhostDoc v5 users: The v5.x license codes won’t work with the v2018. For users with License Protection and active Software Assurance subscription we have sent out the v2018 license codes. If you have not received or misplaced your new license, you can retrieve it on the My Account page. Users without the License Protection or with expired Software Assurance subscription will need to purchase the new version – currently we are not offering upgrade path other than the Software Assurance subscription. For information about the upgrade protection see our Software Assurance and Support – Renewal / Reinstatement Terms