Version 2025.12.18.0
Changes made in this release:
It's been a long time coming but it's finally here. The help file builder now fully supports using Markdown
files for conceptual content topics. You no longer need to use MAML for conceptual content unless you really
want to.
- Added a conversion option to the content layout editor to convert MAML topics to their Markdown equivalent.
- Added rendering support for Markdown topics to the Topic Previewer tool window.
- Updated the Entity References tool window to allow insertion of links in the Markdown format.
- Updated the build engine and presentation styles to support Markdown conceptual topics.
- Removed many of the lesser used MAML topic templates and added a Markdown topic template.
- Changed the help file builder new project template to use Markdown files by default.
- Added support for quick info tooltips and Go To Definition Support for topic links, images,
tokens, and entity references in Markdown topics.
See the Markdown Support topic for general information on using Markdown for conceptual content topics and
the Converting MAML Topics To Markdown topic for information on converting existing MAML topics to Markdown.
This is the first release to support Markdown conceptual content so there may be some things that were missed
or that may need some adjustments. If you run into any issues, please open an issue and provide details on the
requested change along with any relevant examples.
- Due to a change in MSBuild/dotnet build 18, it is no longer possible to obtain an instance of the active
project when building using either of those tools. Instead, the project must always be loaded by the build
task. Another side-effect caused by this issue is not being able to use command line property overrides.
Instead, you must use a target override file. See the Building Projects Outside the GUI topic for more
information. The AlwaysLoadProject build task property has also been removed since it is no longer relevant.
- Updated inherited documentation generation to correctly support C# 14 extension block comments. The compiler
generated classes used to implement them are also correctly excluded from the documentation.
