Sandcastle or NDoc? A good msdn-like doc generator?

Question

I've always been bothering myself with a question: "Javadoc, Doxygen and much more.. is it really possible that Microsoft does not provide its developers with a good doc generator?". It has always sounded strange to me... Also because Msdn is a very good documentation typesetting... I really prefer it above all other generators and documentation styles.

Keeping on bothering myself I finally decided to get deeper in this issue and found the existence of NDoc and SandCastle. Wow, I told myself, I finally get it... So it seemed. OK they are good generators but I thought that Microsoft sponsored an official doc gen a bit more than those two I mentioned before.

So, what do I want? Just knowing what doc-gen a microsoft developer uses to document his code in msdn-like style. Are NDoc or Sand Castle official msdn-like document generator, approved my Microsoft? Which one is the best? If they are not, what doc-gen should I use to document in msdn-style?

Answer 1

We use DocumentX (used to use NDoc) and I like it a lot. Their license check system is a bit of a pain but the program itself is great.

Answer 2

SandCastle (with the GUI) is fully adequate documentation generator. I don't see a reason why MS would put more effort into it.

By the way, you may want to get the GhostDoc Visual Studio plug-in. It speeds up creation of doc comments a lot (it can even generate them completely, as long as you name your methods and parameters and stuff properly).