Features
Doc-O-Matic is a tool with great power and flexibility. This section is designed to help you learn which features Doc-O-Matic comes with and how they can help you solve your documentation problem.
Summary
Software becomes increasingly complex and a reliable tool that helps creating documentation and keeping it up-to-date is crucial for success. When you take great care about developing the best possible product, you will also want your tools to produce best possible results. From Online Help to print documents, Doc-O-Matic produces just about any documentation for end users as well as team members.
Create documentation of any kind and size with Doc-O-Matic effortlessly. From PDF booklets to manuals with thousands of pages, from application Help projects with less than 20 topics to library documentation containing tens of thousands of symbols, Doc-O-Matic makes it easy to stay on top of your projects.
Doc-O-Matic makes it possible to produce and distribute your documentation in highly accessible formats from only a single source. Let Doc-O-Matic help you get the documentation task done quickly, reliably, accurately and effortlessly.
Doc-O-Matic Facts
Using Doc-O-Matic brings you the following advantages:
- Your documentation is always up-to-date.
- Doc-O-Matic supports the C/C++, C#, Delphi, VB.NET, IDL, Java, ASPX, JSP, JavaScript, Matlab and PHP programming languages.
- Doc-O-Matic adopts to your way of documenting source code and supports XML Doc and JavaDoc.
- Using Doc-O-Matic you can author both your source documentation and your application Help.
- Doc-O-Matic produces highly accessible output tailored to your needs.
- Doc-O-Matic comes with predefined templates for widely used documentation standards such as Visual Studio and MSDN documentation or Delphi VCL Help.
- Doc-O-Matic helps you manage your source code by providing a class hierarchy visualization tool, a flexible report feature and a graphical documentation QA tool.
- Doc-O-Matic produces source documentation and application Help in PDF and RTF, HTML Help, Help 2, Help Viewer, Web Help/browser based HTML and XML.
- Doc-O-Matic is a single source documentation tool.
- Doc-O-Matic is a stand alone Windows application with an easy-to-use user interface.
- Doc-O-Matic comes with a command line compiler, Doc-O-Matic can be integrated into your automatic build process easily.
Doc-O-Matic is used in all kinds of industries from semiconductor manufacturers to game development companies. Read more in the What Users say section.
Feature Overview
General Features
- Native support for C/C++, C#, Delphi, VB.NET, IDL, Java, ASPX, JSP, JavaScript, Matlab and PHP
- Integrated support for macro expansion, conditional defines, code skipping and more
- Usage of namespace usage information for symbol resolving and automatic linking
- Complete language support, no configuration necessary
- Modules and separate hierarchies for modules
- Member folders for namespaces and modules
- Extended method folders, visibility folder
- Member overview pages
- Supports Unicode files and Unicode identifiers
Managing Code and Documentation
- Visual Content Manager and TOC designer
- Project Manager for source files, image and include paths, modules and output files
- Project-wide search
- Project statistics including word count
- Class hierarchy visualization and design tool
- Report generation tool
- QA Manager to visualize the documentation status of your project
- Quality assurance features to assure that up to-date and accurate documentation is created
- Master projects, ability to store TOC information in external files
Extracting Comments
- Extracts existing untagged plain text descriptions, formatting without using tags for sections, lists, headings and tables
- Supports simple HTML formatting in comments
- Extracts comments from any source files that support comments (for example Assembler, VB6, SQL, Perl, LISP, Ada, Fortran, COBOL)
- Optional exclusive usage of triple-slash comments (C/C++, C#, Delphi) and triple-quote (VB.NET)
Authoring and Editing
- Single source Help authoring tool
- Author conditional text on character, section and topic level
- Visual table of contents designer
- Text reuse features such as snippets and text variables
- Labels to markup and automated formatting on certain text parts (useable for menu paths, inline sections and much more)
- Integrated topic editor with familiar user interface
- Complete separation of authoring and output design
Describing Code
- Fully featured editor
- QuickDoc work flow management
- Live spelling
- Insert tables, images, links, (native and external links to URLs and files) flags, keywords, colors, titles, character and paragraph formatting
- Inserts plain text format comments in source code or external documentation files
- Use project databases to easily link to other projects and IDE Help systems (MFC, VCL and .NET)
- Predefined but customizable documentation sections that enable you to easily create summaries, 'See Also' links, examples, parameter descriptions, return values and example code
- Describe code in multiple locations
- Filter to reduce displayed symbols
- Source code view that optionally displays the whole source file
- Imports HTML files, plain text files and Word documents
Tools
- Command line compiler
- Tools to support team development and project merging (edit templates, import projects and project templates)
- Tool to move all source comments in an external file
- Code Translation Tool for managing the syntax translation matrix
- HxBrowse for examining the Help 2 namespace registry
- tfhxreg for registering Help 2 files into namespaces, fully supporting Unicode
Common Output Format Features
- Add several configurations for each output format
- Use pre-formatted templates or apply your own formatting to the output
- Produces linked graphical class hierarchies and diagrams (including derived classes)
- Adds fully customizable symbol overviews and navigation pages. Optionally include base class members
- Generates content for folder and member overview pages
- Creates multi-language syntax
- Provides full automatic hyper linking in your project, between projects and between projects and MFC, VCL and .NET framework Help
- Add automatically created cross linked reports from your documentation (for example all Todo sections, all bugs sections, all deprecated symbols and a glossary)
- Add additional grouping levels for symbols that are integrated in overview pages automatically
- Customize all output formats including table of contents, index, headers and footers for each output format
- Provides translations for all predefined words in the output
- Author conditional text
- Produces PDF files and manuals, without additional tools
- Table of contents, index, title page and copyright page
- Page number references to relevant pages for print manuals
- Link to other PDF documents and URLs
- Customize page and headline numbering in PDF
- Double side printing support
- Chapter tabs
- Flexible header and footer configuration with variable-driven print values for topic titles, numbering, page numbers and page counts
HTML Help Systems
- Use templates for Visual Studio and Embarcadero Help styles.
- Context sensitive Help support for C++ and Delphi
- Provides link database for linking into Visual Studio framework Help, VCL Help and MSDN
- Visual Studio.NET Dynamic Help support
- Optionally show all sub-topics (for example all class members or all variables) on one HTML page
- Full customization of the default topic (Welcome Page), add additional files to customize your HTML output
- Support for plain HTML, HTML Help, Help 2 and Help Viewer
- Borders
- Insert additional CSS code for all elements
- Expandable sections
- Tabbed sections
- Automatic anchor generation for all sections and "top" links in HTML
- Popup support
- Include fully formatted HTML files in your Help
- Fixed header in HTML implemented using DHTML
- Linked images, automatic "big version" images and hover effect for images
- Dynamic contents page with automatic synchronization with selected topics
- HTML 5, XHTML 1 or HTML 4.01 compliant output
XML Output
- Customizable section tags
- Symbol structure
Localization
- Localizing Doc-O-Matic projects is controlled in one central place, the localization dictionary. All strings in the project that possibly contain translatable content are run through the dictionary upon output generation. Doc-O-Matic comes with localized button artwork for HTML and there is a tool that helps switching the current language easily.
Feature Matrix
| Professional | Author* | |
| Platforms | ||
| Supports Windows 32-bit | • | • |
| Supports Windows 64-bit | • | • |
| Programming Languages and Input Processing | ||
| Language group I: C/C++, C++/CLI, C#, Delphi, VB.NET | • | n/a |
| Language group II: IDL, ASP.NET, Java, JavaScript, JSP, MATLAB, PHP | • | n/a |
| Support for in-source documentation | • | n/a |
| Support for XML documentation source files | • | • |
| Supports off-source documentation | • | n/a |
| Supports Unicode source files and Unicode identifiers | • | • |
| Supports Unicode external documentation | • | • |
| Master projects and external TOC files | • | • |
| Translation dictionary for output in other languages | • | • |
| Customizable source code parser configuration | • | n/a |
| Extended C++ parser features (system includes, prototype-less functions, setter/getter conversion, macro expansion) | • | n/a |
| Namespace layout configuration | • | n/a |
| Extended Pascal parser features (implementation section parsing, system auto-using) | • | n/a |
| Conditional define handling | • | n/a |
| Code skipping | • | n/a |
| Basic comment finding configuration (comment Token configuration, comment location, lists, walls, etc) | • | n/a |
| Extended comment processing (triple-slash comments only, parameter list description parsing, ignored lines, Comment Skip Tokens) | • | n/a |
| Configure topic processing options (ignore empty topics, auto-combine overloads, inherited documentation, multi-location configuration) | • | n/a |
| Automatic text setup (automated snippets, automatic text for undocumented symbols) | • | • |
| Support for XML Doc, JavaDoc and native comments | • | n/a |
| Basic section configuration (changing types and adding starter strings) | • | • |
| Advanced section options (adding, deleting, starter delimiter configuration, white-space processing) | • | • |
| Integrated editor configuration | • | • |
| Color setup | • | • |
| Managing Features | ||
| Content Designer for TOC design and individual topic selection | • | • |
| Visual control over export of individual topics, topic groups and hierarchies | • | • |
| Project Manager | • | • |
| Symbol and topic filtering | • | • |
| Import project tool for team development | • | • |
| QuickDoc | • | • |
| Move documentation tool | • | • |
| Reports Manager | • | • |
| QA Manager | • | n/a |
| Class hierarchy view | • | n/a |
| Code translation matrix editor | • | n/a |
| Light-weight project configuration utility | ||
| Editor and Authoring | ||
| Fully visual WYSIWYG Topic Editor | • | • |
| Standard word processing features including bold, italic, underline, mono-type, subscript and superscript | • | • |
| Color configuration using color names | • | • |
| Lists, tables, images, checked links, code blocks, headings, paragraph alignment | • | • |
| Fast Topic creation and navigation | • | • |
| Easy image management | • | • |
| Quick edit features like "Follow Link" | • | • |
| Conditional text using sections | • | • |
| Snippets | • | • |
| Text variables | • | • |
| Live spell checking and project spell checking | • | • |
| Automatic formatting for text variables | • | • |
| Text Labels | • | • |
| Conditional text using label exclusion | • | • |
| Automated formatting, replacement and markup using text labels | • | • |
| General Output Features | ||
| Automatically generated navigation tables | • | • |
| Automatically generated navigation pages | • | • |
| Full automatic cross-linking within projects and links to external projects | • | • |
| Automatically generated symbol overviews | • | n/a |
| Reports | • | • |
| Glossary | • | • |
| Local class hierarchies | • | n/a |
| Class hierarchy for project | • | n/a |
| Class hierarchies for all modules | • | n/a |
| Visual table of contents designer | • | • |
| Modules for project partitioning | • | n/a |
| Project database for cross project linking | • | • |
| Auto linking and linking aliases | • | • |
| Automatic text snippet insertion into all topics | • | • |
| AutoDoc Features | ||
| Automatic export set selection based on symbol type (class, type, function, ...) | • | n/a |
| Automatic export set selection based on member visibility (public, protected, private) | • | n/a |
| Automatic export set selection based on documentation status | • | n/a |
| Advanced export set selection (topic status, topic version information) | • | n/a |
| AutoDoc folder configuration | • | n/a |
| AutoDoc page text configuration | • | n/a |
| Navigation description configuration | • | • |
| Navigation description word count limits | • | • |
| Navigation table layout configuration | • | • |
| Extended member table configuration (inherited members, sub-categories, visibility-type combination, overloads configuration) | • | n/a |
| Extended file section configuration | • | n/a |
| Indicator image configuration | • | • |
| Default title configuration (page titles, TOC titles, index titles) | • | n/a |
| AutoDoc title configuration | • | n/a |
| Automatic index generation | • | • |
| Advanced index configuration | • | • |
| Index prefix removal | • | • |
| Extended navigation section and additional information section options (naming, declaration text listing kind, table layout) | • | • |
| Automated summary section generation | • | • |
| Declaration source code auto-generation | • | n/a |
| Declaration code options and syntax highlighting configuration | • | n/a |
| Multi-language syntax output | • | n/a |
| Body source code output for functions | • | n/a |
| Body source code output for files | • | n/a |
| Local graphical class hierarchy output | • | n/a |
| Text class hierarchy output | • | n/a |
| Graphical class hierarchy layout and styling configuration | • | n/a |
| Project Databases for automated interlinking of Doc-O-Matic projects | • | • |
| Automatic linking | • | • |
| Advanced auto-linker options (minimum word length, forbidden words list) | • | • |
| Auto-linking aliases | • | • |
| Topic Flags | • | • |
| Automated QA checks (documentation status, parameter description, parameter names, return value description) | • | n/a |
| Custom build steps | • | • |
| HTML, HTML Help, Help 2, Help Viewer, Web Help | ||
| Basic file and folder options (output path, file names) | • | • |
| HTML 5, XHTML 1 and HTML 4.01 compliant output | • | • |
| Additional HTML output file options (custom file naming, template files, additional files, custom welcome page) | • | • |
| Section order and heading configuration | • | • |
| Advanced section output configuration (automated table configuration, navigation links and section configuration) | • | • |
| Collapsible sections | • | • |
| Tabbed sections | • | • |
| Complete control over layout and formatting | • | • |
| Page header and footer configuration | • | • |
| Topics paths | • | • |
| Embedded table of contents and index for instant access | • | • |
| Dynamic topic path bread-crumbs | • | • |
| Advanced output options (welcome page, TOC, index, copy links, ...) | • | • |
| Dynamic expanding TOC page | • | • |
| Custom header information | • | • |
| HTML page encoding | • | • |
| Big and hover-highlight images | • | • |
| Custom search page integration | • | • |
| HTML file template for easy integration into existing layouts | • | • |
| Customizable PDF output | • | • |
| Double-page printing | • | • |
| Watermarks | • | • |
| Hyperlinks within the document and external links | • | • |
| Section order and heading configuration | • | • |
| Advanced section output configuration (Automated table configuration, Navigation links and section configuration) | • | • |
| Complete control over layout and formatting | • | • |
| Page header and footer configuration | • | • |
| Complete control over automatic page and topic numbering | • | • |
| Advanced PDF features (bookmarks, title page, copyright page, table of contents, numbering, index, chapter tabs) | • | • |
| Title page graphic | • | • |
| Topic title configuration | • | • |
| Advanced output options (image resolution, output images, flag display) | • | • |
| RTF | ||
| Customizable RTF output | • | • |
| Double-page printing | • | • |
| Hyperlinks within the document and external links | • | • |
| Section order and heading configuration | • | • |
| Advanced section output configuration (Automated table configuration, Navigation links and section configuration) | • | • |
| Complete control over layout and formatting | • | • |
| Page header and footer configuration | • | • |
| Complete control over automatic page and topic numbering | • | • |
| Advanced RTF features (title page, copyright page, table of contents, numbering, index) | • | • |
| XML | ||
| Basic file and folder options (output path, file names) | • | • |
| Encoding | • | • |
| Structure options | • | • |
| Tag options | • | • |
(*) As a pure Help Authoring Tool Doc-O-Matic Author
does not have source documentation related features. Features related to source code documentation
are marked with n/a for Doc-O-Matic Author.