Sandcastle unified documentation generation for C# and Java projects

Question

I have a set of related components that are basically provide the same functionality for various 'client' environments, like CLR and Java. Currently I'm generating my documentation using Sandcastle for the CLR components and I'm about to start the Java ones. I'd like to keep generating an unified documentation, with consistent look-and-feel across all components (CLR/Java and whatever will follow). the documentation will only be available on the site, so I only care about the html format, no CHM or other formats.

Is this possible? As I see things, this would be possible if I can collect the Java documentation into an XML with the schema Sandcastle consumes, in order to have Sandcastle generate all documentation, for all platforms. This process is (somehow) described here: http://sandcastle.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=32301

Is there some more straight forward, simpler, alternative?

Answer 1

If I've understood the question correctly, you want both .NET and Java documentation to have a uniform look and feel. The option you're going for is to use Sandcastle Builder to generate HTML documentation from documentation you have in Java.

I think this might be the wrong approach, as Sandcastle will stumble finding the types that exist in the Java, even if it's outputted to the XML format Sandcastle expects.

My approach would be to write a doclet for your Java documentation, to match the style of the .NET/Sandcastle/MSDN style documentation. The default Javadoc HTML style is hideous, the default .NET MSDN style docs are far superior in my view, so matching those will be the best way round.

There's a wealth of doclets already written. I couldn't find one to produce XML (the links is incorrect on the doclet.com site). An IBM tool does it though here, whether it uses doclets I'm not sure.

Once you have the XML, you can adapt the XSL that Sandcastle builder uses to produce the same looking HTML.

Hope this helps + I'm on the right lines.

Update

Looks like someone has made a doclet to produce MSDN documentation: ndoclet, which means you could skip the XSL transformation process.

Answer 2

I tried Sandcastle for my projects but it was way to slow.

Now I use doc-o-matic which also supports Java.