You may have a couple of Rope-O-Matic dummy cows for your rodeo practice, or post Terror-O-Matic JavaScript reader boards for your offbeat homeland security threat level announcements, but those "O'Matics" are of limited value to software developers. On the other hand, Toolsfactory Software, Inc. of Reno, Nevada, just announced Doc-O-Matic 4.2, which pleased the developers we spoke with very much. In fact, we met the first Doc-O-Matic customer a couple of months ago as an official of another company we interviewed), or we'd have been tempted to think he was on the ToolsFactory payroll. But both customers we interviewed are simply diehard fans of Doc-O-Matic. It apparently generates loyalty, as well as many types of help documentation from one input source file. Now that's what we call "O-Matic."

Doc-O-Matic is a source code documentation System for C/C++, IDL, C++.NET, C#, VB.NET, Delphi, JavaScript ASP.NET, MATLAB, JSP, and Java. It creates fully cross-linked documentation systems, including source code documentation, online help, and user manuals, in PDF, HTML, HTML Help 1.x, Help 2.0, Windows Help, RTF and XML, according to ToolsFactory.

The new version 4.2 adds automatic integration into Visual Studio and other Help 2 systems. Doc-O-Matic generates all the files needed for plugging created Help 2 files into the target Help 2 systems. Master files and H2Reg registration scripts are generated to make distribution and testing easy, say company officials. Doc-O-Matic now uses the H2Reg tool to register Help 2 files, allowing Doc-O-Matic to plug help files into other help systems. A new index option and three new filter expressions have been added.

Markus Spoettl, President and Chief Developer of Toolsfactory Software, says his favorite thing about version 4.2 is that it automatically plugs Help 2 files into the MSDN help system or any other help tool system, such as Borland's and Microsoft .NET.

"[Doc-O-Matic is] really easy to use for people who didn't use documentation before," said Spoettl. "It supports nearly all important languages, project sizes, formats, and command styles." Spoettl said the six different output formats from just one source, by changing an output configuration, speaks to Doc-O-Mastic's flexibility. "Many customers use Doc-O-Matic for documenting software, internal or library documentation that they sell, as well as Web site authoring," said Spoettl.

ToolsFactory has an active user forum, and Spoettl says the product has matured through much customer feedback.

Spreading The Word.HLP

Robert Leahey is Director of Developer Relations at AutomatedQA Corporation, Las Vegas, Nevada, maker of TestComplete, Automated Build Studio, AQtime, and AQdevTeam. Leahey sometimes does training as part of his job, and uses Doc-O-Matic unofficially on the job.

"I needed a documentation tool that could handle my very specific needs for creation of technical papers," explained Leahey. "It needed to output to multiple formats (such as PDF, HTML, WinHelp, etc.) from a single source. And it needed to be able to automatically generate help topics for the source code I often include in my papers. Doc-O-Matic fit the bill precisely."

Leahey uses Doc-O-Matic to output technical papers, and to automatically generate documentation for sample code and demo projects. "Doc-O-Matic reads the structure of my code to generate help topics, and then populates those topics with what it finds in my code comments." He finds Doc-O-Matic indispensable for a variety of tasks, because "It bridges the unfortunate gap between standard documentation tools [that are not source-code aware] and those tools that can parse source code (but can't output to multiple formats)." He says Doc-O-Matic does both very well. He adds, "Doc-O-Matic really shines in its flexibility of source code support. I work in many languages: C#, Delphi, VBScript, Jscript, DelphiScript, etc. Doc-O-Matic reads all mine and many others."

Leahy demonstrated its usefulness to several of his consulting clients by adding automated source code documentation (using Doc-O-Matic) to their nightly build process. Said Leahey, "Some of my clients had hundreds of thousands, or even millions of lines of code, with hundreds of classes. ... By using Doc-O-Matic, these clients were able to have standardized, up-to-date documentation generated for them on a nightly basis; the productivity benefits were immeasurable."

Developer Wanted Help — And Knew Just What He Wanted

For Bruce Denham, Technical Editor II,  Help Developer, and UI Designer for Schlumberger Technology Corporation of Austin, Texas, Doc-O-Matic satisfies the requirements for an intuitive help development tool to easily document the APIs for one of his company's application frameworks (a combination of C++/COM and C# code). He explained, "I wanted a tool that would make it easy to integrate the output into Visual Studio .NET via MS Help 2.0. Doc-O-Matic fit both requirements beautifully."

"The first thing that attracted me to the tool was its user interface. Doc-O-Matic has a ton of settings for parsing the input and producing the output. And 99% of those settings are exposed and documented explicitly within the UI using a familiar browser-like design model. The UI lists all the help settings in hierarchical tree-views on the left and displays each setting's 'page' at the right." According to Denham, the sheer number of settings could be overwhelming for first-time users, but visible access to these settings makes browsing through the settings straightforward. He says, "With Doc-O-Matic, source-code documentation is only the beginning. Its rich interface makes it really easy to create beautiful output for all flavors of source code. But as I've worked with it, I realized that Doc-O-Matic could be used for a lot more than source code documentation." He's used it recently to create Online API help integrated into VS.NET and MSDN; automated API release notes for software developers; and online and hardcopy end-user product documentation.

A single user license in your choice of Doc-O-Matic for .NET, C++, Delphi, Java, or Authoring costs $499; the Professional edition single user license is $999. A 30-day trial version of Professional is available.

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