DevExpress End-User Documentation

By accessing this repository, you agree to the terms of the DevExpress End-User Documentation License Agreement.

Learn how to clone DevExpress End-User documentation and use sources as a white-labeled documentation. Create your own documentation websites and PDF files for projects based on DevExpress technologies. You can also review a sample pre-built website.

End-User Documentation contains information about WinForms and ASP.NET WebForms/MVC products, as well as Reporting and Business Intelligence Dashboard.

If you search for Developer Documentation with API Reference, refer to docs.devexpress.com.

Document Format and Supported Output Types

Documents in this repository are written in markdown. You can manually copy the information to your own help file according to our license.

The repository uses DocFX to convert markdown files to an HTML website or a PDF file.

You can make the following changes to the documentation, or skip this step if you want to reuse the end-user documentation as is:

Remove unnecessary files.
Add new documents to your application. You should update the toc.yml (table-of-content) files if you added or removed topics.
Change screenshots to match your app's UI.
Specify logo and site titles: Template Metadata.
Create a custom DocFX template.

View Content

Do one of the following to view the End-User Documentation content:

Browse this repository's content directly: index.md
View the pre-built sample website: devexpress.github.io/dotnet-eud
Build an HTML Website
Build PDF files

Build an HTML Website

Prerequisites

Familiarity with the command line

.NET SDK 6.0 or higher

Git

Make sure you have .NET SDK installed, then open a terminal and enter the following command to install the latest DocFX:

dotnet tool update -g docfx

You can also download the latest version of DocFX directly: releases.

Warning

Do not use the master branch because it is the version currently under development.

Copy the repository to your computer and checkout the branch corresponding to the version of DevExpress controls your application uses.

git clone https://github.com/DevExpress/dotnet-eud
git switch 20.1

Once you switched to a version-based branch, you can make changes to the documentation.

To preview changes, open a console window and call the docfx build command with the path to docfx.json in the downloaded dotnet-eud repository. DocFX will place the generated documentation content into the _site folder. Add --serve to preview the generated website at http://localhost:8080 once the build process is complete.

docfx build D:/dotnet-eud/docfx.json --serve

DocFX produces static HTML files under the _site folder ready to publish to any static site hosting server. Deploy the created documentation to a web server or browse the documentation directly from the local file system. For more information, refer to the DocFX documentation: Publish to GitHub Pages.

Build PDF Files

If your end users require a printed version, you can build a PDF file.

You can configure PDF file generation in several ways.

The resulted PDF file will be located next to the toc.yml file in the _site folder.

Build Locally

Open the console and call docfx pdf D:\test-eud\docfx.json. You need a succeeded build before you proceed.

Use docfx.json

Include the pdf command to docfx.json.

{
  "build": {
    "fileMetadata":{
      "pdf": true
    }
  }
}

You can generate PDF only for a specific toc.yml:

{
  "build": {
    "fileMetadata":{
      "pdf": {
        "dashboard-for-web/**/toc.yml": true
      }
    }
  }
}

Use toc.yml

Include the pdf command to toc.yml to generate PDF according to this table of content:

pdf: true
items:
- name: Reporting for Web
  href: reporting-for-web/
  topicHref: reporting-for-web/articles/index.md

Refer to the following article for detailed instructions: Create PDF Files.

Troubleshooting

Below are the common issues you can face when building this repository's documentation.

The build failed with errors/warnings

Refer to build output to find the cause of the problem.
The build process fails with the System.IO.PathTooLongException exception

Reduce your working directory's full path (move the repository closer to a drive root).

See also: dotnet/docfx#156
The table of contents is not displayed when browsing the generated documentation from the file system

Your browser security configuration may restrict executing the JavaScript code that accesses your local files (the table of contents is in a separate toc.html file when using the default DocFX template). In this case, you can use the statictoc template instead. To switch to this template, add --template statictoc to the docfx.exe parameters:
```
docfx.exe build ../dotnet-eud/docfx.json --template statictoc
```
The table of contents is embedded into each topic with this template which increases the build time and HTML file sizes. Alternatively, you can override the browser's restrictions (which may be unsecure). For example, Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge accept the --allow-file-access-from-files command line switch which allows loading local files.

We recommend you to use the --serve DocFX switch to preview documentation, and then share it with end users via a web server instead of browsing the file system.

If your issue is not listed, you can submit a new issue to this repository or contact us via the DevExpress Support Center. You can search the DocFX issues list, or try building the docfx-seed sample documentation project to check if your issue is specific to this repository.

Versions 17.1 and Earlier

If you require End-User documentation for v17.1 or earlier, download End-User Documentation Installer containing CHM and PDF files. Markdown is not available for these versions.

Version	Installer
v17.1	DevExpressEndUserDocs171.exe
v16.2	DevExpressEndUserDocs162.exe
v16.1	DevExpressEndUserDocs161.exe
v15.2	DevExpressEndUserDocs152.exe
v15.1	DevExpressEndUserDocs151.exe
v14.2	DevExpressEndUserDocs142.exe
v14.1	DevExpressEndUserDocs141.exe
v13.2	DevExpressEndUserDocs132.exe
v13.1	DevExpressEndUserDocs131.exe
v12.2	DevExpressEndUserDocs122.exe
v12.1	DevExpressEndUserDocs121.exe

You are free to download these files and distribute them to your end users. However, Developer Express Inc. has the right to change or remove these files without notice.

DevExpress/dotnet-eud