Why Another Blog?

Why indeed.

I wanted to find a way to get the findings of my very sharp team to VSIP partners and anyone that would use automation in Visual Studio to accomplish a goal. I am a documentation manager of a very fine team. Most of my writers are programmers who, oh by the way, write.

What does this team write about?

Visual Studio Automation

Although Visual Studio offers you many tools and the power to accomplish almost every task, you may find that you require an additional or finer level of control. For example, you may have a task or series of tasks that you are performing regularly and want to automate. Or you may have tools that you have designed that you want to be able to use in the Visual Studio integrated development environment ( IDE).

To address these issues, Visual Studio features rich programming models, known as the Automation object models, for extending and automating its IDE. The various Automation models provide the ability to automate the environment and provide extensions and new features to it. Each model concentrates on a particular area of the IDE, such as the tool windows, the code editor, the various projects, and so forth.

Visual Studio Industry Partners (VSIP)

The Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE) is designed from the ground up to be the host for multiple languages and development tools, including Visual Basic, Visual C#, and Visual C++. The IDE can be easily extended so that Visual Studio customers have a complete set of tightly integrated tools for their development projects.

Visual Studio offers a wide range of extensibility options. Users can encapsulate a common set of actions into a reusable macro, or use an automation add-in to add significant features to Visual Studio. Visual Studio packages (VSPackages) support even greater integration, such as the creation of custom editors and language packages.

The Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) Program was created to educate and support independent software vendors (ISVs), systems integrators (SIs), academic institutions, corporations and developers interested in integrating tools, components, and languages into the Visual Studio IDE.

In addition to offering the technology for advanced integration scenarios, the VSIP program includes:

  • Community and technical support

  • Visual Studio licensing options

  • Co-marketing opportunities

For more information on the VSIP program, see the Visual Studio Extensibility web site

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Microsoft Help 2.0

Microsoft Help 2.0 includes two sets of documentation:

The Microsoft Help Authoring Guide provides all the information you need to author Microsoft Help 2.0 using Microsoft Help Workshop. This guide provides information about creating Help projects, as well as instructions for converting HTML Help 1.x to Microsoft Help 2.0. There is also a complete reference section that introduces you to elements such as the Microsoft Help Workshop TOC Editor, and property pages used to create Help projects, as well as describe new XML tags and attributes.

The Visual Studio Help Integration Guide provides information to help you integrate your Help collection with the Visual Studio combined collection (VSCC).

No really, Why?

I was inspired by Rob Caron's blog which covers the Visual Studio Team System effort. And some of the VSIP partners that visited with us at the VSIP dev labs here in Redmond thought this might be another valuable conduit of information from the Visual Studio team.

So I asked Rob for some guidelines above and beyond the reams of stuff provided here at Microsoft to bloggers. Since he (and I) are ex-military, he put it very succinctly and in a way I'd appreciate in a recent e-mail:

Paraphrasing the lectures in the military ...

  • you're an ambassador in every post - represent!
  • remember OpSec
  • don't write anything you wouldn't want your chain of command reading
  • be respectful of our allies (partners)
  • be honorable
  • link to others

- Rob Caron (via Pocket PC Phone Edition)

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2005
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2005
    The Microsoft Help Authoring and Visual Studio Help Integration Guides are now part of VSIP which can be download from the Visual Studio Extensibility site (see link on main blog page).

    In Everett one of my writers created and rolled out a Help Integration Wizard that automates adding help to MSIs among other things. Once again, if you go to the Visual Studio Extensibility site, you will get more information and a download location.

    I personally think the Microsoft Help 2.0 will be used for the forseeable future as the primary help mechanism. But then, I just a first-level manager.

    To download Microsoft Help 2.0 go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/htmlhelp/html/hworiHTMLHelpStartPage.asp.

    I've got a one-on-one with my manager to run to so I hope this is readable. Remember, don't try this at home. I are a professional writer.
    ;o)

  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2005
    VSIP 2005? Or VSIP 2003?

    VSIP 2003 is where I was getting lost and confused at on 2.0 but I did notice the VSIP 2005 the other day just havent downloaded it, yet. But I have a feeling I will be doing so soon soon as I get home in the piece and quiet of the home lab.

  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2005
    Yes, you should be using VSIP 2005 by now. Beta one was available last year. :o)

  • Anonymous
    February 11, 2005
    Well see what I mean, now why weren't you blogging last year to tell me these things. I was here reading... waiting for ya...

  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2005
    Hi Jim,

    It's great to see another blog on VSIP. I have a suggestion to make. It would be very helpful to see heads up posts on Whidbey VSIP changes in the upcoming betas, Beta 2 in particular.

    I've converted my VSIP package to Whidbey Beta 1 with relative ease, but if December CTP is an indicator of things to come, then Beta 2 would have some breaking VSIP changes. Would be nice to see that info shared with us so that we can get a feel of conversion coming. Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2005
    I will work with the team to try to provide some of that information. My goals is to get interesting changes to you as fast as possible.

  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2005
    Thanks Jim.

    Here's an idea for a post. How about outlining the differences between VS2003 and Whidbey Beta 2 in how VSIP handling of command key binding has changed?

    Just a thought. Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    February 16, 2005
    Sergey,

    What are the problems you've run into? For the most part, native-code VSPackages are highly compatible between 2003 and 2005, at both the binary and source levels.

    Bob
    VSXUE too

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2005
    I don't wanna turn this into support forum for but since you've asked... <g>

    Here's how I support keyboard bindings in VS.NET 2003: 1 - assign shortcuts to most of my package 20+ commands, and 2 - provide one custom installable mapping scheme to work around a problem of shortcuts not being assigned for few commands (probably reserved shortcuts for VS internal use), and one other scheme that matches Borland Delphi shortcut assignment.

    Now, in December CTP build, it seems that package commands shortcuts are only used if General Options scheme is chosen (profile?). I may be off with the exact name as I don't have Whidbey installed here. I'd like to know if there is a way to perhaps have command shortcuts be always assigned. It also seems that former .vsk files have been superseded by some sort of new global settings files, which also covers shortcuts.

    To summarize, we are interested in: 1 - a consistent way of merging package shortcuts regardless of startup options chosen, and 2 - an ability to distribute custom keyboard schemes. If there are any package new registry entries to accommodate request 1, or anything to help with request 2, those are the kinds of things I'd like to see shared us.

    Thank you.

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