Sandcastle Import Question

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dempseypat
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Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by dempseypat »

Our developers have Visual Studio 2013 and one has installed Sandcastle. It creates a nice chm file which I wish to augment with H&M 6.4.

I do the help files and do not have VS 13 installed. I can install Sandcastle.

Can I copy files created by Sandcastle to my machine and then import them into H&M? If so, which files or folders do I need?

Thanks,
Pat
Pat Dempsey
Pismo Beach, CA
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Tim Green
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by Tim Green »

See Basic Working Procedures > Importing Data > Importing Sandcastle projects in the Help & Manual help. :)
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dempseypat
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by dempseypat »

Sandcastle is installed and is correctly compiling the CHM file.

When I click New Project and click the Sandcastle Documentation icon, I get the message "The sandcastle installation could not be found. Ensure you have properly installed Sandcastle." I figured since it compiled the CHM with Sandcastle, it was installed correctly.

The Sandcastle version is 2014.2.15 Beta
H&M version is 6.5.0 Build 2950
I rebooted after installing Sandcastle and rebooted after compiling the chm project with Sandcastle
Continue with Options is grayed out.
Import button is grayed out.
We do not have the html2 compiler installed.

Not sure what to do next. We are checking with the Sandcastle folks to see if they changed their registry entries.

Pat
Pat Dempsey
Pismo Beach, CA
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Tim Green
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Pat,

If Sandcastle is correctly installed HM should find it automatically. I'll check with the developer responsible for this and see if there is anything else you need to change. Make sure that you restarted Windows and HM after installing Sandcastle, of course... However, the problem is almost certainly that you have installed Sandcastle 2014 beta, and it is quite possible that that is not supported yet. 8)
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Pat,

Update: As I indicated, the problem is that you are using an unsupported beta version of Sandcastle.
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dempseypat
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by dempseypat »

Thank you. I suspected that might be the case. Now you know there is a new version coming.

BTW, Sandcastle really does a good job at documenting something like an API from Visual Studio, and it's a huge plus that H&M can import it. Thanks for that. It is going to save us Hours and Hours.

Pat
Pat Dempsey
Pismo Beach, CA
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dempseypat
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by dempseypat »

Since we started this thread, a released version has come out for 2014. It is: 2014.4.22

For the version history see http://www.ewoodruff.us/shfbdocs/Index. ... cbe8df.htm

Can you check with the developer to ask which version we should use? If he has new code and would like me to do a test import for him, I can do that.

Thanks.
Pat
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Pat,

Currently Help & Manual only supports the two official Sandcastle releases prior to 2014 (i.e. up to Sandcastle 2013). We are going to be adding support for the 2014 version but that needs to be tested thoroughly first because MS sometimes makes quite major structural changes.
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by dempseypat »

We are working our way through creating the H&M new project.
We got an error that AddFriendlyFileNames.xsl could not be found and found that file out on the web, and copied it into the correct folder. It did not install with Version 1.9.8 of Sandcastle.

We also got the error that CopyComponents.dll could not be found, so we found one of them on the web and copied it into the appropriate folder. The error then indicated that it could not be loaded. That DLL is version 2.4.10580.01.

Evidently H&M is looking for files that Sandcastle is not installing or we have not installed the latest version. However, it seems to be the latest based on the link we posted in a couple of replies above.

Here is the actual error message:

Error: CopyFromIndexComponent: A file access error occured while attempting to load the build component 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Sandcastle\\ProductionTools\CopyComponents.dll'. The error message is: Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Program Files (x86)\Sandcastle\ProductionTools\CopyComponents.dll' or one of its dependencies. Operation is not supported. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131515)

Any help is appreciated.
Pat Dempsey
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Tim Green
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Pat,

I've asked our Sandcastle expert to have a look at your description and see what he thinks. From what you write, however, it sounds as though you are trying to make an incompatible version of Sandcastle compatible by manually adding files that do not belong to that installation. That is probably a bad idea... If you are using a compatible version of Sandcastle you definitely won't need to do this. Version 1.8 is probably too old to be usable.
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by dempseypat »

The AddFirendlyFiles was not in the installation. Manually adding it by running Windows Explorer as admin got us past that error. It found the other file also, but says it's the wrong version. Maybe we need to know exactly what version of Sandcastle we should be using.

Pat
Pat Dempsey
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Pat,
dempseypat wrote:The AddFirendlyFiles was not in the installation. Manually adding it by running Windows Explorer as admin got us past that error. It found the other file also, but says it's the wrong version. Maybe we need to know exactly what version of Sandcastle we should be using.
Please do NOT try to add files manually to Sandcastle in Windows Explorer, the result will almost certainly be a mess. One of the problems with Sandcastle is that Microsoft changes it massively from version to version, so much so that it can pretty much be considered a different program each time. The different versions also have different files, and if you mix the files manually the results will be unpredictable at best.

Currently Help & Manual explicitly supports Sandcastle 2.4, 2.6 and 2.7. Apparently 2.5 was skipped because it was not in use much or there were some problems with it.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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dempseypat
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by dempseypat »

Thanks very much. We will install 2.7 and give it a go.
Pat
Pat Dempsey
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dempseypat
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Re: Sandcastle Import Question

Unread post by dempseypat »

On looking at my control panel, I have two Sandcastle related programs.
1. Sandcastle Documentation Compiler Tools from Microsoft, Version 2.7.4
2. Sandcastle Help File Builder from EWSoftware Version 1.9.8

Could it be the EWSoftware Product that is causing the problems? I'm thinking that this installed along with the Microsoft product.

Is there a URL that you know I can get what I need to make H&M work with Sandcastle? I can uninstall everything and install that MSI.

Thanks,
Pat
Pat Dempsey
Pismo Beach, CA
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