DocToMaml 1.0 Beta is Now Available

DocToMaml 1.0 Beta is a tool that converts HTML and XHTML help files to Microsoft Assistance Markup Language (MAML) in a batch process.

MAML help files are used by DocProject and Sandcastle to build user documentation in various presentation styles.

DocToMaml provides a console mode and a project-based graphical user interface (GUI) for adding inputs and defining conversion rules to quickly and easily convert HTML files into MAML. Future releases will provide more flexibility for defining rules, but the beta can still be used to greatly decrease the amount of effort that would be required to convert large numbers of HTML files into MAML, compared to doing it manually.

Features

Some of the features of DocToMaml are:

• GUI and console mode.
• Project-based for quickly saving and loading different configurations.
• File and folder inputs are supported.
• Global and input-specific rule sets may be defined.
• Edit the source HTML of a file input using a WYSIWYG editor for full control over the conversion.
• Convert a file input in memory so that you can see the result quickly.
• MAML results for file inputs can be modified in a text box.
• Batch conversion saves results to disc for all file and folder inputs and generates a conceptual artwork file that can be used by Sandcastle's ResolveArtLinksComponent build component.
• Hyperlink references to local topics are updated automatically.
• Preliminary user documentation.

Current Limitations

• Only the Conceptual MAML document type is supported.
• Subsections and sub containers are not supported. For example, nested tables and lists are added to the current in-line element, if one exists; otherwise, they are added as new top-level containers.
• Images appear to be broken in source view, although this has no effect on the output. You don't have to update the paths to broken images since DocToMaml doesn't do anything with image files in the current release anyway.

For help with DocToMaml, see the compiled help file that is available for download on the release page.