Has anybody written a tool that reflects upon a PoSh snapin assembly and
generates the skeleton MAML help file? These are quite tedious and tricky
to write by hand. Anybody know where can I find the schemas for MAML and
PowerShell's dialect of MAML?

--
Keith

i personally decided NOT to try to read the maml, but rather use
get-help, and parse the powershell objects that are returned by them,
which in itself is tedious, but its doable.. in powershell analyzer,
for my rich help.. the code that actually does it is in powershell
code, rather than C#

see this blog entry for a screenshot of what i am producing from
processing the get-help objects that are returned

http://www.karlprosser.com/coder/?p=61

<klumsy@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1165540604.533112.84990@80g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
>i personally decided NOT to try to read the maml, but rather use
> get-help, and parse the powershell objects that are returned by them,
> which in itself is tedious, but its doable.. in powershell analyzer,
> for my rich help.. the code that actually does it is in powershell
> code, rather than C#
>
> see this blog entry for a screenshot of what i am producing from
> processing the get-help objects that are returned
>
> http://www.karlprosser.com/coder/?p=61
>

Problem is that I'm trying to generate help for the PSCX cmdlets, so I'd
have to have the MAML first before I could get Get-Help to spit out those
help objects. :-)

4> Get-Help Format-Xml
Get-Help : Cannot find Help for topic "Format-Xml".
At line:1 char:9
+ Get-Help <<<< Format-Xml

--
Keith

Hi Keith,

> Problem is that I'm trying to generate help for the PSCX cmdlets, so I'd
> have to have the MAML first before I could get Get-Help to spit out those
> help objects. :-)

Yepp, writing PS/MAML help files is a very tedious job and I was quite
suprised that PS doesn't even creates the (IMHO most important) SYNTAX
section on the fly by using refection on the CmdLet.
It's too easy to forget a little parameter...

cu

Max

Hi Keith,

I agree creating help files is tedious today. We are thinking about
improving this user experience. Internally we use a InfoPath based tool to
document help content like Parameters, Description,Examples,Notes etc. We
use the same database to generate cmdlets (defining Parameters) as well as
help conent in Maml foramt.

--
Krishna[MSFT]
Windows PowerShell Team
Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

"Maximilian Hänel" <ngSpam@smjh.de> wrote in message
news:%23p1JsSnGHHA.5020@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Hi Keith,
>
>> Problem is that I'm trying to generate help for the PSCX cmdlets, so I'd
>> have to have the MAML first before I could get Get-Help to spit out those
>> help objects. :-)
>
> Yepp, writing PS/MAML help files is a very tedious job and I was quite
> suprised that PS doesn't even creates the (IMHO most important) SYNTAX
> section on the fly by using refection on the CmdLet.
> It's too easy to forget a little parameter...
>
> cu
>
> Max

"Krishna Vutukuri[MSFT]" <kriscv@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:O9z9SByGHHA.4712@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Hi Keith,
>
> I agree creating help files is tedious today. We are thinking about
> improving this user experience. Internally we use a InfoPath based tool to
> document help content like Parameters, Description,Examples,Notes etc. We
> use the same database to generate cmdlets (defining Parameters) as well as
> help conent in Maml foramt.
>

FYI in the PSCX 1.0 release there is a new Get-CmdletMaml cmdlet that
reflects upon a snapin assembly and generates the PowerShell MAML for the
assembly using type information and PowerShell attributes. If if you use a
few .NET attributes (DescriptionAttribute and DefaultValueAttribute) as well
as a few PSCX attributes (DetailedDescriptionAttribute,
AcceptsWildcardsAttribute and RelatedLinksAttribute) you can get pretty a
decent help file. There isn't support for Notes and Examples though in this
release. Still, using the -All parameter it will spit out the MAML for
these sections which you can then fill in manually. Or perhaps using some
XSLT wizardy (be sure to check out the PSCX Convert-Xml cmdlet for XSLT
transforms).

--
Keith