.NET Documentation Compilers

When Microsoft introduces XML documentation I was wondering why Microsoft didn’t introduce a compiler to compile this XML documentation into nice looking API’s. Hmm I don’t have an answer for it but some open source guys came up with a good tool (NDOC) for this need. Guys who have the experience in NDOC know what I’m talking about. If you don’t know about NDOC have a look at http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndoc/

Now the good news is Microsoft have open up there internal MSDN style XML documentation tool to the community. All who are interested in code / API documentation look at SandCastle. http://blogs.msdn.com/sandcastle/ is a good place to hang around. Download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads

SandCastle is purely command prompt base set of tools and compilers. If you like to get a technical overview of the tool have a look at this blog

https://blogs.msdn.com/sandcastle/archive/2006/07/28/681209.aspx

Some guys have written a NDOC style application in top of SandCastle tools and can be found at http://www.codeplex.com/SHFB

Enjoy !