HTML in the XML Documentation

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Mark Howell
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John Mark Howell

BlankDoes anyone know what all HTML tags are allowed in the XML doc tags? Example, I know by experience that <h1> tags are allowed. What other tags are allowed? The MSDN is not clear about this.
 
BlankBeing XML, any tag is allowed as long as you close it, it is all a
matter of what your tool will process. Are you using anyting specific to
process your xml into a displayable format?
FOr what its worth, I think VS just ignores tags, so I wouldn't worry about
it there.

Does anyone know what all HTML tags are allowed in the XML doc tags?
Example, I know by experience that <h1> tags are allowed. What other tags
are allowed? The MSDN is not clear about this.
 
OK, is anyone from MS listening? I thought that the XML code doc was a
significant feature in C#. I am aware that it is extensable, but what about
FULL support within Visual Studio? What about replacable XSL/CSS files?
What about full HTML and/or formatting support (again within VS)?
 
Thanks Anders, but I'm already using NDOC. For anyone else out there
listening, if you develop in C# and you do any kind of XML code commenting,
you MUST HAVE THIS TOOL! The HTML2Help doc that it generates it very
professional. It is the best and (as far as I'm aware of) the only tool you
can use to generate code doc this well.

That being said, the reason for my rant, is that when you are working on the
documentation for a system that has hundreds of classes and you're embedding
HTML formatting tags, it is a real hassle to edit the XML comments, run NDOC
to generate the VS HTML solution, build the solution, then view the
resulting HTML help to see how the formatting looks. We need a truly visual
solution within VS to help. If you can see how it looks as you're editing
it, then you can save a great deal of "clean-up".
 
Hello John

I completely agree that the NDoc tool is a must have. The output is very (if
not completely) close to the original MSDN format, which I find quite good.

Regarding a visual realtime feedback on the commenting, I'm not sure this is
something we could expect from the VS .NET developers for the Whidbey
release, but given enough request, I'm sure they will investigate ways of
providing a richer environment.

The already rich commenting is a great step forward (even though java has
had this for a long time I have been told), and works quite well for our
developers here.
 
John Mark Howell said:
OK, is anyone from MS listening? I thought that the XML code doc was a
significant feature in C#. I am aware that it is extensable, but what
about
FULL support within Visual Studio? What about replacable XSL/CSS files?
What about full HTML and/or formatting support (again within VS)?

I don't think XML docs are specifically meant to provide that level of
access through VS itself. I'd rather see a seperate editor(or a seperate
editing mode) over implementing this type of thing into the code editor.
 
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