Version 2.7.2.0, December 2012

Sandcastle Tools

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[This is preliminary documentation and is subject to change.]

MRefBuilder Tool

  • Fixed MRefBuilder so that it does not exclude System.Xml and System.Data from the framework assembly cache.

  • Updated the Frameworks.xml file to reference the December 2011 Silverlight Toolkit for Silverlight 5 rather than the older April 2010 version for Silverlight 4.

  • Merged changes from ComponentOne that prevent additional cases that cause a crash when documenting obfuscated assemblies.

BuildAssembler Tool and Components

  • Added support for topic key and message parameters in the message logging methods in BuildAssembler.

  • Updated all build components to include the topic key in warning and error messages when available.

  • Updated TransformComponent to raise a ComponentEvent with a TransformedTopicEventArgs parameter that contains the topic key and the transformed topic document. This allows components that ran earlier in the stack to perform tasks after the topic has been converted to HTML. This eliminates the need for a post-transform component as the component that ran earlier can handle the post-transform processing itself.

Production Transforms

  • Updated CreatePrototypeToc.xsl with a rootNamespaceContainer parameter that can be set to true to have it generate a root namespace container node like the transformation for the other presentation styles.

  • Updated ApplyVSDocModel.xsl and ApplyPrototypeDocModel.xsl to include assembly version number information in the API member data.

Presentation Styles

  • Fixed up the casing on the scripts\ and styles\ folder references so that they are all consistent and will not cause casing issues on UNIX based web servers.

  • Fixed VS2005 CommonUtilities.js so that the <see langword="XXX" /> elements work properly. The prior Help Viewer 2.0 fix broke their handling in the other help formats.

  • Moved Shared\Content\syntax_content.xml and the files in Shared\Transforms\ into each of the presentation styles so that they are all self-contained. This will make cloning a presentation style to customize it easier. There was already a significant amount of duplication anyway so merging the few files that were shared does not make much difference in terms of maintenance.

  • Removed the unused files in Shared\Scripts.

  • Updated all presentation styles to include assembly version number information in the API topics.

  • Updated all presentation styles to handle the title attribute on code elements.

  • Added a condition to hide the language selector in the Prototype presentation style if there is only one language.

  • Fixed handling of the preliminary XML comment element in all presentation styles so that it renders the content if specified.

  • Added a transformation template in all presentation styles to get the code language so that it is consistent in all places that need it for the language filter.

  • Added logo support to all presentation style XSL transformations. The VS2010 style now supports all of the logo placement options to match the other styles.

  • Updated the XSL transformations so that they do not output an empty Abstract Help 2 metadata element for certain cases such as when it only contains a non-breaking space character.

  • Merged changes from ComponentOne into the VS2005 style to prevent the unnecessary borders on the page headers in MS Help Viewer 1.0.

  • Added support for the event XML comments element in all presentation styles. This was a custom element implemented by NDoc that never made it into Sandcastle. It renders a section called Events containing a table listing events that can be raised by the method and a description for how the event can be raised.

Extras

  • Added MAML snippet definitions for the common block and inline elements and a related page to the guided installer to copy them to the local snippets cache for the various Visual Studio versions.

  • Updated the Sandcastle MAML guide to remove references to the Sandcastle Help File Builder components and features that have been moved into the Sandcastle build components and presentation style XSL transformations.

  • Started to document the Sandcastle tools by adding this help file. The content and images in the general information and architecture topics was originally created by Dave Sexton as part of the wiki content on the Sandcastle Styles project site on CodePlex.

    As of this release, it is still a work in progress. More information on the various tools and components will be added as time permits.

  • Added the Sandcastle XML Comments Guide help file to provide a comprehensive set of documentation on the XML comments elements and how they are used with Sandcastle.

See Also

Other Resources