Features

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, HTML Help, Help 2, Help 3, Web Help/browser based HTML, Windows Help 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.

Download the fact sheet here: Fact Sheet (PDF)

Feature Overview

Feature Matrix

	Professional	SRC	Express	Author*
Programming Languages and Input Processing
Language group I: C/C++, C++/CLI, C#, Delphi, VB.NET
Language group II: IDL, ASP.NET, Java, JavaScript, JSP, MATLAB, PHP
Support for in-source documentation
Support for XML documentation source files
Supports off-source documentation
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
Extended C++ parser features (system includes, prototype-less functions, setter/getter conversion, macro expansion)
Namespace layout configuration
Extended Pascal parser features (implementation section parsing, system auto-using)
Conditional define handling
Code skipping
Basic comment finding configuration (comment Token configuration, comment location, lists, walls, etc)
Extended comment processing (triple-slash comments only, parameter list description parsing, ignored lines, Comment Skip Tokens)
Configure topic processing options (ignore empty topics, auto-combine overloads, inherited documentation, multi-location configuration)
Automatic text setup (automated snippets, automatic text for undocumented symbols)
Support for XML Doc, JavaDoc and native comments
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
Class hierarchy view
Code translation matrix editor
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
Reports
Glossary
Local class hierarchies
Class hierarchy for project
Class hierarchies for all modules
Visual table of contents designer
Modules for project partitioning
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, ...)
Automatic export set selection based on member visibility (public, protected, private)
Automatic export set selection based on documentation status
Advanced export set selection (topic status, topic version information)
AutoDoc folder configuration
AutoDoc page text configuration
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)
Extended file section configuration
Indicator image configuration
Default title configuration (page titles, TOC titles, index titles)
AutoDoc title configuration
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
Declaration code options and syntax highlighting configuration
Multi-language syntax output
Body source code output for functions
Body source code output for files
Local graphical class hierarchy output
Text class hierarchy output
Graphical class hierarchy layout and styling configuration
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)
Custom build steps
HTML, HTML Help, Help 2, Help 3, Web Help
Basic file and folder options (output path, file names)
XHTML compliant output, HTML 4.01 optional
Additional HTML output file options (custom file naming, template files, additional files, frames, 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
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
PDF
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)
Windows Help
Basic file and folder options (output path, file names)
Section order and heading configuration
Advanced section output configuration (Automated table configuration, Navigation links and section configuration)
Complete control over layout and formatting
Advanced options
XML
Basic file and folder options (output path, file names)
Encoding
Structure options
Tag options
Support
Peer support forums
Customer support forums
Customer support via email

(*) 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 for Doc-O-Matic Author.

Screen Shots

The Content Manager is the main working area for documentation management, hierarchy configuration and Help authoring.

For source projects it displays all namespaces (packages), modules, classes, members, variables, enums, structs, functions and files in a well structured topic hierarchy. The different icons represent different symbol types and topic states. The check boxes next to each topic provide control over whether a topic should be available in the output. The automatic topic hierarchy is highly customizable, with options for folders for symbols in modules, namespaces and extended member folders. Doc-O-Matic also provides features for sorting symbols and topics. In addition all topics can be moved manually by drag and drop.

The Editor displays and edits topics. It provides common word processing power including lists, tables, live spell checking and supports advanced features for text reuse like snippets. When writing source code documentation, Doc-O-Matic reads and writes native comments (those that don't need tags), XML Doc and JavaDoc.

The Help authoring features include topics, sections, snippets, labels, links, images, index, flags and much much more. Each output configuration - a project can have any number of configurations - defines its own set of topics, which sections to export and in which order. That way different output can be produced in same project just by switching settings.

The QA view helps identifying areas in the documentation which need work. It helps getting a quick impression of how complete the documentation is, even in very big projects. During output generation Doc-O-Matic can issue warnings for missing documentation in multiple levels of detail.

Class hierarchies are automatically created during output generation and can be used in your documentation. Doc-O-Matic creates class hierarchies for the entire project, for each module in the documentation and for each individual class in the project.

Reports are a very versatile way to generate additional content. This includes simple and multi-item glossaries, topic listings, QA related information. Reports provide a powerful interface to select a group of topics based on a set of criteria and print tables filled with properties of those topics - such as the title or a specific section.

The Project Manager manages source, topic and output files, include paths and image paths, configurations, project databases and modules. It also acts as an interface to the module definitions. Modules make it possible to divide a project into several parts and have Doc-O-Matic create a separate topic hierarchy for each part.

Every aspect of input processing, editing and output generation in Doc-O-Matic is extremely customizable. The settings view provides an interface to all the different options both for general project settings as well as output configuration depended settings. Each project can contain an unlimited number of output configurations which define the look and feel as well as features of the generated output. The settings view lists all settings pages in a hierarchical tree.

What Users say

Building the API documentation with Sandcastle took about 30 minutes on my virtual machine. Building the same documentation with Doc-O-Matic on the same machine took 3 minutes. Jesper Högström, CapableObjects Doc-O-Matic was an essential component of Delphi 2007's tremendously improved help system experience. Markus and his team were instrumental in making our documentation content more useful and accessible and Doc-O-Matic made building our help content fast and easy. Nick Hodges, Delphi Program Manager - CodeGear Doc-O-Matic has made the tedious process of generating help documentation for our product lines a breeze. It has literally saved us hundreds of hours when generating our online help I don't know what we would do without it. Kirk Stowell, President and CEO - codejocksoftware Game development becomes increasingly harder as the size of the projects and the required content grows bigger. One area we've been improving internally is our software documentation for our core libraries. After reviewing other freeware and commercial documentation programs, we decided to use Doc-O-Matic because of the great job it does extracting documentation from our code, the ability to switch between many different output formats, and the professional looking documentation that it produces. The amount of options available in Doc-O-Matic makes it easy to customize our documentation to fit our needs. Michael Kelley - Rockstar San Diego Doc-O-Matic is a superb, well-supported product - and it has steadily improved with each release. We've used the product since version two and toolsfactory has been openly receptive to feature requests and very responsive and tech-support inquiries. Some of our C++ libraries contain hundreds of source files and classes - but Doc-O-Matic handles them with aplomb. Doc-O-Matic is indispensable. Jim Henderson, President - Innovative Integration

This tool is absolutely fantastic! There's no doubt in my mind that Doc-O-Matic is the best documentation tool on the planet. I should know, because I've probably used just about all of them. Doc-O-Matic's model is far superior to most models for help authoring (such as that of RoboHelp) which require a lot of labor-intensive manual work that has nothing to do with content development. And compared to the help tools with similar code parsing models (NDoc, Doxygen, etc.), Doc-O-Matic is absolutely matchless in features and flexibility. Bruce Denham - Schlumberger Doc-O-Matic continues to prove invaluable in our documentation process. It allows us to document our work in a natural and readable fashion, and the graphical interface lets us stay completely in control of the whole process. The level of customer support is also excellent. I have no hesitation in recommending this software to anyone who is thinking about in-line documentation for their code. Jason G Doig, Principal Engineer - Sony Computer Entertainment Europe R&D We used Doc-O-Matic to produce documentation for a brand new code base and had great results. We documented approximately 1000 API functions and data types for a new project. Without Doc-O-Matic there is no way we would have been able to produce such a nice and complete set of documentation for our customers and have it ready immediately. Before Doc-O-Matic we produced documentation manually, and not only did it take a long time, but the documentation was often out of date just because it was so tedious to make updates. I have looked over the past several years for a decent way to automate our documentation, and evaluated several other products, but Doc-O-Matic is the first product I found that I consider to be really useable, and fully customizable to to my needs for appearance of the output. Speaking of customizable output, Doc-O-Matic is so flexible I was able to configure it to produce output that had nearly the same format as we were producing manually before. Another feature that I really like is how well it reads comments out of the box, and how easy it is to configure it to read any commenting style. Our developers just followed a very simple commenting format for each function in order to allow Doc-O-Matic to produce complete documentation for the function. Our developers like it too because now the API documentation is in one place - the source code. Doc-O-Matic saved me weeks of work in producing this first set of documentation for our new project, and I expect this to keep paying off in the future as I will be able to generate a complete set of documentation for each future release with very little additional work. Joe Kroesche - Conexant Systems, Inc.