mdassembler (1)

Leading comments

mdassembler manual page.
(C) 2006 Jonathan Pryor
Author:
  Jonathan Pryor (jonpryor@vt.edu)

(The comments found at the beginning of the groff file "man1/mdassembler.1".)

NAME

mdassembler - Compile documentation for use in monodoc browser

SYNOPSIS

mdassembler OPTIONS* DIRS+

DESCRIPTION

mdassembler has been obsoleted by mdoc(1). See the mdoc-assemble(1) man page.

mdassembler is a program that creates .tree and .zip files for use in the monodoc documentation browser.

The .tree and .zip files are copied into monodoc's sources directory, and reside with a .source file which is used by monodoc to specify where the documentation should be displayed. The .source file's /monodoc/source/@basefile attribute specifies the filename prefix for the documentation files. This must be the same prefix as used with the --out parameter.

OPTIONS

--ecma

The documentation found within DIRS is in the Mono ECMA documentation format. See the Mono ECMA Documentation Format section below.

--ecmaspec

The documentation found within DIRS is in the ECMA Specification documentation format. See the Mono ECMA Specification Documentation Format section below.

--error

The documentation found within DIRS is in "error" format. See the Error Documentation Format section below.

--help

Show program argument information.

--man

The documentation found within DIRS is in man page format. See the Man Page Documentation Format section below.

-o, --out PREFIX

Specify the output file prefix. mdassembler creates the files PREFIX.zip and PREFIX.tree .

--simple

The documentation found within DIRS is in "simple" format. See the Simple Documentation Format section below.

--xhtml, --hb

The documentation found within DIRS is in XHTML format. See the XHTML Documentation Format section below.

FORMATS

The following documentation formats are supported:

Mono ECMA Documentation Format

An XML documentation format with one file per type.

See the mdoc(5) man page for more information.

Mono ECMA Specification Documentation Format

This is not the format you're looking for.

This is the format used to represent the ECMA-334 (C#) standard within monodoc. It is not used to display class library documentation; for class library documentation, use the --ecma format.

Error Documentation Format

Used to present detailed error messages, and is used in monodoc's "C# Compiler Error Reference" tree. DIRS is not a directory, but is instead a configuration file, containing the XML:

    <ErrorProviderConfig>
        <FilesPath>../../mcs/errors</FilesPath>
        <Match>cs????*.cs</Match>
        <ErrorNumSubstringStart>2</ErrorNumSubstringStart>
        <ErrorNumSubstringLength>4</ErrorNumSubstringLength>
        <FriendlyFormatString>CS{0:0###}</FriendlyFormatString>
    </ErrorProviderConfig>

/ErrorProviderConfig/FilesPath specifies where to look for files, /ErrorProviderConfig/Match specifies the filename pattern to look for within /ErrorProviderConfig/FilesPath, /ErrorProviderConfig/ErrorNumSubstringStart and /ErrorProviderConfig/ErrorNumSubstringLength control which portion of the filename is used as the error number, and /ErrorProviderConfig/FriendlyFormatString controls how the formatting/display of the node in the monodoc tree.

For each file found, it is converted to HTML with C# syntax coloring applied.

Simple Documentation Format

Converts text files into HTML by translating each newline into an HTML <br> element.

Man Page Documentation Format

Converts man pages into HTML for display.

XHTML Documentation Format

Copies the XHTML file as-is.

EXAMPLES

To install your documenation for use with monodoc:

Create a PREFIX.source file

with the contents:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<monodoc>
  <source provider="FORMAT" basefile="PREFIX" path="PATH"/>
</monodoc>

where FORMAT is the documentation format contained within the PREFIX.tree file, e.g. ecma, or simple. PREFIX is the basename of the .tree and .zip files that mdassembler creates. PATH is the "path" in the monodoc tree that should contain the documentation. See the @prefix@/lib/monodoc/monodoc.xml file for a list of PATH values (the //node/@name values).

See also: www.mono-project.com/docs/tools+libraries/tools/monodoc/generating-documentation

Create your documentation

See also the monodocer(1) man page, e.g.

        monodocer -assembly:foo.dll -path:foo/en

Assemble the documentation

        mdassembler --ecma foo/en PREFIX

Make sure that you use the same PREFIX here as you did above.

Install the documentation by using the command

        cp PREFIX.source PREFIX.tree PREFIX.zip \
        `pkg-config monodoc --variable=sourcesdir`

(Note the backticks used in the pkg-config command!) This copies the .source , .tree , and .zip files into the monodoc sources directory, which will allow monodoc to display the documentation.

SEE ALSO

mdcs2ecma(1), mdnormalizer(1), mdoc(1), mdoc-assemble(1), mdvalidator(1), monodocer(1), monodocs2html(1)

MAILING LISTS

Visit lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-docs-list for details.

WEB SITE

See also: www.mono-project.com and www.mono-project.com/docs/tools+libraries/tools/mdassembler