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Integrating Help into Visual Studio .NET

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17 Jan 20043 min read 157.7K   1.3K   106   31
Document your C# code and have on-the-fly help directly integrated into Visual Studio .NET.

Introduction

Working on a project of any size, we all know how important good documentation is. Getting to write it is another issue though.

C# and the Microsoft .NET Framework has taken measures to help you with that. An XML documenting standard has been introduced that you write directly into the source code; much like Javadoc for Java.

In this article, I will explain how to document using the XML tags, how to use NDoc to convert the XML into very nice looking HTML Help files, and last but not least, how to integrate the help into Visual Studio .NET.

Prerequisites

Before you can start documenting, you will need a couple of programs that are all available as free downloads:

I am not going to explain how to install these programs, they pretty much all install completely automatic. After installing all of those, you should be ready to start creating nifty documentation, that will be available directly in Visual Studio as Dynamic Help and Intellisense.

The actual commenting

The actual commenting of your source code is explained in this excellent article: C# Documenting and Commenting.

When you generate the NDoc documentation, you need to use the HtmlHelp2 format.

Using H2Reg to integrate the documentation into VS.NET

Usually, you would have to install a help file using a .msi install script. In this case, that is just way too much work. Fortunately, Helpware has made a small utility called H2Reg that can do it for us. It requires a configuration file and must be called from the command-line, so I thought a little helper program could make it a bit easier. There is a download link at the top of this article.

All you need to do now is fill in the fields and press Generate. The program will make a directory called Help in your project directory that will contain the configuration file, and two batch files that you can use to register and unregister the help files in Visual Studio .NET:

VS.NET Help Integrator Program - attached below

The help collection file you can find in the ./doc directory in your project directory (if you did not change the default NDoc directory, that is).

The program will generate the files in a directory called Help, one level above the NDoc directory. After you generate the files, you just need to run the register.bat batch file to register your help in Visual Studio .NET.

If you have problems with the collection not being registered, have a look at H2Reg's log file called C:\Program Files\Helpware\H2Reg\H2Reg_Log.txt (assuming you installed it in the default directory).

Including the help into Visual Studio .NET

The help files have now been activated and integrated into the Visual Studio Help Collection. You might need to restart Visual Studio .NET if you have it running.

Now we have context sensitive help, Intellisense and dynamic help:

VS.NET - fully integrated help

Conclusion

In a few simple steps, we have integrated help for our own code, pretty much all over the place.

To me, this is really a productivity booster. What about you?

Revision History

  • January 18th, 2004: Updated with new program and instructions to use HtmlHelp2.
  • January 22nd, 2004: Updated program to auto-register into Visual Studio's Help Collections, and updated article to reflect it.

License

This article has no explicit license attached to it but may contain usage terms in the article text or the download files themselves. If in doubt please contact the author via the discussion board below.

A list of licenses authors might use can be found here


Written By
Team Leader momondo
Denmark Denmark
Sune has been programming since 1985.

He has worked with both assembler and many different programming languages, such as: Basic, Fortran, Pascal, C, C++, Delphi, and lately C#.

Sune is married and has two small children and is currently working as a developer for a Danish company called Skygate, currenly working on a cheap flight search engine called Momondo.

Personal blog can be found here.

Comments and Discussions

 
GeneralRe: VSCC Doesnt see Help files Pin
Tom Guinther22-Jan-04 11:17
Tom Guinther22-Jan-04 11:17 
GeneralRe: VSCC Doesnt see Help files Pin
Sune Trudslev22-Jan-04 11:27
professionalSune Trudslev22-Jan-04 11:27 
Question.hxc file? Pin
yetanotherchris19-Jan-04 23:01
yetanotherchris19-Jan-04 23:01 
AnswerRe: .hxc file? Pin
Sune Trudslev19-Jan-04 23:13
professionalSune Trudslev19-Jan-04 23:13 
GeneralRe: .hxc file? Pin
yetanotherchris19-Jan-04 23:19
yetanotherchris19-Jan-04 23:19 
AnswerRe: .hxc file? Pin
Don Kackman20-Jan-04 4:59
Don Kackman20-Jan-04 4:59 
GeneralRe: .hxc file? Pin
Sune Trudslev20-Jan-04 20:16
professionalSune Trudslev20-Jan-04 20:16 
GeneralAdditional info... Pin
Arjan Einbu18-Jan-04 3:01
Arjan Einbu18-Jan-04 3:01 
This is great. I've been looking for how to do this, and your article certainly put me on the way. Thanks!

But you left som unanswered questions...
- I have to create a HTML Help 2 file from nDoc. (The default there is MSDN)
- Where do I find the batch file to run, what is it called? (It's called "register.bat", and I found it in the newly created "help" directory under my projectdirectory...)
- This batch file requires the help files to be placed in a "doc" directory at the same level as the "help" directory. (It may not be, if the project directory differs from the solution directory, and you let nDoc read path and file information from the .sln file.)

I think it will be helpfull for other readers of this article if you can include this kind of info into your article...


Have a look at my latest article about Object Prevalence with Bamboo Prevalence.
GeneralRe: Additional info... Pin
Sune Trudslev18-Jan-04 8:26
professionalSune Trudslev18-Jan-04 8:26 
GeneralRe: Additional info... Pin
Sune Trudslev18-Jan-04 9:23
professionalSune Trudslev18-Jan-04 9:23 
GeneralDownload link for VS.NET Help Integrator utility Pin
Marc Scheuner12-Jan-04 22:56
professionalMarc Scheuner12-Jan-04 22:56 
GeneralRe: Download link for VS.NET Help Integrator utility Pin
Sune Trudslev12-Jan-04 23:46
professionalSune Trudslev12-Jan-04 23:46 

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