[Mono-list] MonoDoc - custom documentation

[Miguel de Icaza]

Hello,

> Is it A) possible to include custom collections of documentation with MonoDoc 
> and B) how do you go about writing such documentation.

Yes, it is possible.   Monodoc has a pluggable system for documentation.

It depends on the specific kind of documentation you want to provide,
for class libraries that is pretty much straight-forward, you have to
use the tools that we distribute in `monodoc' to generate the initial
stubs.

Look at gtk-sharp/doc for the setup used to compile the stubs, once you
have these, you can run the assembler program that generates two files:

	file.zip	holds the content files.
	file.tree	holds the tree for your API.
	file.sources	describes where to hook it up in Monodoc.

Something like:

	cd monodoc/generator
	make updater.exe
	mono updater.exe MyLibrary.dll -o output
	cd output
	mono ../browser/assembler.exe --out MyLibrary --ecma .

Then create the .sources files:

bash$ cat MyLibrary.source
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<monodoc>
  <source provider="ecma" basefile="MyLibrary" path="various"/>
</monodoc>

Then copy the three files (MyLibrary.zip, MyLibrary.tree and
MyLibrary.source) into the Monodoc location:

cp MyLibrary.* `monodoc --get-sourcesdir`

	
> I assume I should be able to write the documentation in some format (XML 
> based?) and easily get MonoDoc to view it. Or am I way off base here?

Yes, you are right.


MIguel