Version 2015.5.2.0

  Important

In a future release, support for all deprecated features will be removed in an effort to simplify and clean up the code base. With so many deprecated features, it is starting to get unwieldy when adding support for new features and presentation styles. As such, the deprecated features need to be removed. In addition, when the deprecated features are removed, I plan on dropping support for Visual Studio 2010 and 2012 from the Visual Studio package. With Visual Studio 2015 on the horizon, I need to reduce the number of versions for which I can realistically provide support. Four versions is starting to be too many.

For a list of the deprecated features slated for removal, see work item #83.

Release notes for version 2015.5.2.0.

Help File Builder

  • Fixed handling of the GenerateProjectSpecificOutputFolder MSBuild option so that it finds the documentation source assembly and XML comments files correctly.

  • Fixed determination of the tools folder when running from the VSPackage so that the build engine can find the supporting files correctly when the package is installed for all users.

  • Fixed determination of the tools folder so that the build engine can find the supporting files correctly in cases where the assemblies are running from the shadow copy folder.

  • Fixed a few theme and font size issues in the VSPackage.

  • Fixed component configuration merging so that it merges help output format specific configuration elements correctly in presentation styles that do not use the multi-format output build component.

  • Fixed the multi-format output component configuration merging so that configuration elements outside of the help format specific sections are not lost.

  • Fixed Go To Definition so that it supports anchor names in MAML link elements.

  • Fixed the topic previewer so that links with anchor names work consistently.

  • Applied fix from dgedge33 to the Member ID Fix-Ups plug-in so that cref fix-ups are applied to group topic IDs as well.

  • Added Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UITest.Playback to the default list of "ignore if unresolved" assemblies in the binding redirection plug-in's default configuration.

  • Fixed the Lightweight TOC plug-in so that it outputs the TOC elements as valid XML allowing the topics to be post-processed and transformed by other tools.

  • Added support for Help Viewer 2.2 which comes with Visual Studio 2015.

  • Updated the HelpLibraryManagerLauncher tool so that the catalogName parameter is optional. If not specified, it defaults to the appropriate catalog name for the Visual Studio version associated with the specified help viewer version.

  • The CatalogName project option now has a default value of an empty string. This allows the catalog name to be determined based solely on the help viewer version being used.

  • Removed the Launch Help Content Manager menu commands from the standalone GUI and the VSPackage.

  • Added a Launch Content Manager option to the View MS Help Viewer interactive dialog box.

  • Added support for the new Markdown Content help format. There are limitations so see the related Markdown Content Help File Format topic for details.

  • Updated the ESent and SQL Server cached data components to work with the new markdown format. If you switch to the markdown presentation style in an existing project with these components, they will need to be removed and re-added to pick up the new configuration elements.

Sandcastle Tools

  • Fixed some bugs in the AddNamespaceGroups tool and made inclusion of the root container more consistent based on the content and whether or not a root namespace container is present.

  • Fixed another issue in MRefBuilder's ParametersMatch() method related to array types in method parameters in derived generic types.

  • Removed the obsolete BrandingComponent.

  • Changed the href-Format attribute on the ResolveReferenceLinksComponent to a nested hrefFormat configuration element so that it can be altered in derived components.

Presentation Styles

  • Fixed the code contracts setter transformations so that they correctly strip the last parameter on the setter contracts elements to form the proper member ID for MSDN lookups.

  • Fixed the keyword search script in the VS2013 presentation style so that it correctly decodes the file indices when there are more than 65,535 files.

  • Merged various VS2013 presentation style adjustments from Sam Harwell.

  • Removed a superfluous quote from the URL in the VS2013 presentation style's SearchHelp.aspx reported by Joris Zwart.

  • Changed period to colon in auto-outline lead-in text content items reported by neoliet.

  • Added a Markdown Content presentation style that generates GitHub flavored markdown topic files.

  • Thanks to Alexis Yannuzzi for supplying Spanish translations for the VS 2013 presentation style content item files.

See Also

Other Resources