How to Use the Professional Edition's Documenting Wizard

Earlier versions of FoxPro relied on FOXDOC.APP to document applications. Visual FoxPro no longer includes FOXDOC.APP; is has Documenting wizard that you can use to document applications. This article describes the Documenting wizard and how to use it.

Documenting Wizard

The Documenting wizard documents projects and program files. The wizard can also create an analysis of your code and clean up the formatting in your files. The Documenting Wizard is included only with the Professional Edition of Visual FoxPro.

By default, the wizard does not modify your existing files. However, you can choose to do this in the final step. The wizard prompts you as you go through these steps:

1. Source File: Enter the name of a project file or a specific program file.
2. Capitalization: Keywords are all the reserved words in the Visual FoxPro programming language. Symbols are the variables and names that you define in your code.
3. Indentation: Select the desired options to enforce conformity in the indentation of your code.
4. Headings: Headings are comments about the code that are relevant to the code they precede. They can be placed at the beginning of files, procedures, class definitions, and methods to make your formatted code easier to read.
5. Reports: The reports that the wizard creates are actually text files. The wizard creates the following types of reports:

         Report Type       File Name    Remarks
         ------------------------------------------------------------
         Action Diagram    project.ACT  Shows the hierarchical
                                        relations within your code. If
                                        you are not working with ASCII
                                        code page 1250 and ANSI code
                                        page 1252, see the directive
                                        "*# document ACTIONCHARS" in
                                        Customizing the Documenting
                                        Wizard.
   
         Cross-Reference   XREF.LST     Lists all the user-defined
                                        symbols.
   
         File Listing      FILES.LST    Lists all the files in the
                                        project.
   
         Source Code       project.LST  Puts all formatted code in a
                                        single Listing file.
   
         Tree Diagram      TREE.LST     Shows the procedure calling
                                        tree.
   
      The wizard also automatically creates the following files:
   
         File Name    Description
         --------------------------------------------------------------
         FILES.DBF    Table with a record for each file in the project.
   
         FDXREF.DBF   Table with a record for each instance of user
                      symbols in the code.
   
      The FDXREF.DBF file contains a field named Flag for identifying the
      keywords. The identifiers are as follows:
   
         Flag  Description
         -------------------------------------------------------------
         B     Base class
         C     Class name
         D     Defined PROC or FUNC (not method)
         F     Function call: myproc( ) or DO myproc
         K     Keyword
         M     Method definition
         N     Name of file
         O     Object
         P     Property of an object
         R     User symbol reference
         V     User symbols (variable) definition (PARA, PRIV, PUBL, DIME)
   						

6. Finish.

By default, the wizard does not overwrite your existing files. Select the Overwrite Existing Files option to overwrite your existing code files with the new ones that the wizard saves.

If you select the Place Files In A Single Directory option and then click Finish, the wizard prompts you to choose a single directory where it will save all the files it creates.

If you select the Place Files In A New Directory Tree and then click Finish, the wizard prompts you to choose a directory where it will create a copy of the project's source tree. It then saves the new, formatted program files in the appropriate directories of the new tree.

If you select the Cross-Reference Keywords option, the wizard adds records to FDXREF.DBF for each instance of Visual FoxPro keywords in your code. Depending on the size of your code, this option may enlarge FDXREF.DBF by a large number of records. When this option is selected, the wizard matches keywords in your code with the first field, named Token, in the file FDKEYWRD.DBF. The second column, Code, in FDKEYWRD.DBF contains an identifier that tells the wizard how to treat the keyword when analyzing your code.

The following table describes the identifier codes:

Customizing the Documenting Wizard

In addition to the options that you choose when running the Documenting Wizard, you can customize additional options outside the wizard.

Indentation in CASE Structures

By default, the wizard looks for the following indentation in a CASE structure: Some developers prefer to indent the lines between DO CASE and ENDCASE an additional level as shown here: If you indent your CASE structures to look like the second example, specify this in FDKEYWRD.DBF. To specify this coding style in FDKEYWRD.DBF, change the value of the Code field to "UU" in the ENDCASE record.

Documenting Wizard Directives

You can place special directives in your code files to instruct the Documenting wizard to perform specific tasks when analyzing the code. These directives can go in two places. Place them in:

• Your project's main program file to instruct the wizard how to analyze all code files in the project.
• Individual code files to instruct the wizard how to analyze specific files.

Each directive begins with an asterisk, so Visual FoxPro treats them as comments and ignores them when compiling programs. The directives are not case-sensitive.

The syntax of the directives is: It is a good idea to place the directives near the beginning of the main program file so that the Documenting wizard encounters the instruction when it begins analyzing. The remaining sections in this article explain these directives.

*# document ACTIONCHARS "abcdef"

By default, when the Documenting Wizard creates an Action Diagram or a Tree Diagram, the wizard uses six characters that appear as lines and square corners when viewed under ASCII code page 1250 or under ANSI code page 1252 in FoxFont. Not all the characters map to line characters when viewed under other code pages.

The six default characters and their corresponding FoxFont characters are listed below as a, b, c, d, e, and f. NOTE: The FoxFont characters needed for this table were not displayable in this font, so a description of the characters was used instead.

When using other code pages, insert the following code in your main program file to ensure that the lines in your diagrams map to line-like characters:

   *# document ACTIONCHARS " -|+++"
					

NOTE: Tthe first character of the string enclosed in quotation marks is a space. For a list of supported code pages, please see the "Code Pages Supported by Visual FoxPro" topic in the Visual FoxPro Help file.

*# document XREF cMode

This directive tells Visual FoxPro whether to enable cross-referencing of variables. The default is ON.

*# document EXPANDKEYWORDS cMode

This directive tells Visual FoxPro whether to enable the expansion of keywords. For example, "DEFINE WIND" could be expanded to "DEFINE WINDOW." The default is OFF.

WARNING: Not all keywords in Visual FoxPro begin with a unique string of four characters. For example, "REPL" could be short for "REPLACE" or "REPLICATE." Be careful if you include this directive, which will overwrite existing files.

*# document XREFKEYWORDS cMode

This directive corresponds to the Cross Reference Keywords option on "Step 6 - Finish" in the Documenting wizard. The default is OFF.

*# document ARRAYBRACKETS cMode

The default is OFF.

*# document ACTIONINDENTLENGTH nSpace

In this directive, nSpace is the number of character spaces that you want the Documenting Wizard to use for indentation. The minimum value allowed is 2.