Support NDoc project!

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I've been asking for help on getting NDoc working with .NET 2.0 recently. I was lucky enough and Kevin Downs, the developer of NDoc sent me an alpha version of the next NDoc release that was good enough for generating Mvp.Xml API documentation. And that unexpected problem made me realize that NDoc reached such level that we all take this tool as granted, like part of .NET SDK or Visual Studio. While NDoc is actually a free open-source tool developed by enthusiasts! NDoc is so awesome and pervasive that Microsoft even doesn't bother to provide any alternative solutions. Java has javadoc and doclets, while Microsoft provides no tool for generating code documentation and indeed - why, don't you have NDoc? That's an interesting open-source phenomena.

But the cruel fact is that developing such a tool as NDoc for no money is a tough challenge. In .NET 2.0 Microsoft introduced huge amount of changes in both CLR/BCL and SDK docs NDoc has to adapt to, while NDoc project is very low on contributors and donations and Kevin Downs, the guy who writes NDoc has been recovering from some major health problems recently. That actually looked like NDoc project is dead, but it's not! Kevin is working on the next version and it already works as you can see here.

But my point is that we absolutely have to support NDoc project. NDoc saved Microsoft lots of money, while Kevin Downs even has no MSDN subscription and Visual Studio 2005! What a shame... Come on, Microsoft, show some love to NDoc and .NET community! And NDoc users, especially the ones using NDoc in commercial stuff - please support NDoc, donate some money to the project or directly to Kevin Downs.

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TrackBack URL: http://www.tkachenko.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/540

I bookmark del giorno #22 from Lorenzo Barbieri @ UGIblogs! on November 30, 2005 10:09 AM
I bookmark del giorno #22 from Lorenzo Barbieri @ UGIblogs! on November 30, 2005 10:32 AM

6 Comments

To make it work in Firefox open ndoc.js and uncomment the following code:

function Load(key)
{
//userDataCache.load("docSettings");
//var value = userDataCache.getAttribute(key);
//return value;
return null;
}

function Save(key, value)
{
//userDataCache.setAttribute(key, value);
//userDataCache.save("docSettings");
}

function RemoveAttribute(key)
{
//userDataCache.removeAttribute(key);
//userDataCache.save("docSettings");
}

Since Microsoft release a set of tools called Sandcastle to generate documentation, a Visual Studio 2005 add-in has been developped by Process Academy. It's a free add-in. (Check in the news section for the download link). The add-in is called 'XpertBuildDoc'

Vikrant, NDoc for .NET 2.0 isn't released yet. Keep your eye on http://ndoc.sourceforge.net.

i am unable to run my project in Ndoc.
Visual studio2005 is installed in my machine.
when i select file than it shows "unable to read the file"
i need to do some settings that i donot know.
please help me.

Regards
Vikrant

Well, it really doesn't work in Firefox, but works ok for me in IE.
Anyway, it's built by pre-alpha NDoc2 version so I could expect such issues.

Hi,

i stumbled upon the mvp.xml project this morning.
Looking further for the documentation i found
http://mvp-xml.sourceforge.net/api/2.0/index.html.
But the right frame is diplayed as an empty page in Firefox and IE. IE says, there would be a 'permission denied' error at Line 114.
I don't know whether it's a problem with my browser's properties or your ndoc-(alpha) version.

greetings from germany
Rainer

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