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Sandcastle Help File BuilderNDoc 1.x Converter

This is used to convert NDoc project files to the help file builder project file format.

Post-Conversion Review

From its very beginning, the help file builder was written to be a viable replacement for NDoc. As such, almost all of the NDoc project properties have matching help file builder project properties and convert straight across to the equivalent properties in the new project. However, after conversion, the following items will need to be reviewed:

  • Review the Documentation Sources and References project nodes to see that the required items were imported correctly and make any necessary adjustments.

    Tip Tip

    Given that solutions and projects are supported as documentation sources, you may find it easier to add them as documentation sources instead of the assemblies, comments, and references that they contain. When a solution or project is used, these items are imported from them automatically at build time.

  • All files and subfolders in the folder specified in the NDoc AdditionalContentResourceDirectory property are added recursively to the project as file items. In addition, the files in the FilesToInclude property and the various Help 2 NamedUrlIndex page type related properties are also added to the project as file items. Each file will have a default build action based on its file extension. You can add a site map to the project and edit it to set the order and layout of the additional content HTML files.

    Tip Tip

    The help file builder contains full support for conceptual content that uses Microsoft Assistance Markup Language (MAML) to create additional non-API topics such as How-Tos, walkthroughs, etc. You may want to consider switching any additional HTML content to conceptual content to take advantage of its features. See the Conceptual Content topic for more information.

  • NDoc project files contain sections for several different documenters that it supported. Since there is no indication as to which is the active documenter, all properties are imported from the MSDN, MSDN-CHM, VS.NET 2003, and MSDN 2003 documenters. If the documenters contain properties that are duplicated in the other documenters, it is possible that the wrong value may end up in the converted project. Review the properties after conversion to be sure that the values that you wanted were used.

See Also