Re: What Program Do You Use For Software Documentation? + Wiki Question

["Janet Swisher" <jmswisher -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 8:21 AM, Paul Weir <Pweir -at- bju -dot- edu> wrote:
> Thank you all very much for letting me know what program(s) you use for documentation. It seems like Word might suit my needs for now. I was pretty excited about potentially having a reason to learn and use XML, though!

> My documentation will be used by another IT worker here who will be given the responsibility of answering end-users' questions regarding this program. He will directly use my documentation as a guide, and the end-users themselves also might receive my documentation directly.
>
> Since I will be sort of collaborating with this other IT worker, my supervisor suggested I look into using our companies wiki as well as Word for this project. I noticed a lot of people mentioned the software programs they use (which is what I asked for, so thank you very much!), but I didn't see anyone mention that they use wiki. Is this a technology that is typically not used in the technical writing field? If anyone has a wiki experience with their technical writing, would you care to share your wiki experience?
>

A lot may depend on what wiki engine your employer is already using.
Some are more conducive to technical documentation than others.

Using wikis for documentation is an area of emerging interest for
technical communication. There's a group for this topic in The Content
Wrangler community on Ning:

http://thecontentwrangler.ning.com/group/wikifortechnicaldocumentation

Anne Gentle blogs about this topic often. You might be especially
interested in this recent post, since it's about going from DITA XML
to wiki text:
http://justwriteclick.com/2008/10/16/dita-meets-wiki-output-dita-to-wikitext/

Let me also second Kevin's endorsement for OpenOffice.org. Not only is
it free, but it is much less prone to corrupting documents than Word.
Its "master document" feature (for combining multiple files into a
single large document) actually works, in contrast to Word, whose
master document feature is just broken and should be avoided.

-- 
Visit my blog at: http://www.janetswisher.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing 
solution. Author in Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor,  Microsoft Word or 
HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. 
http://www.doctohelp.com

True single source, conditional content, PDF export, modular help.
Help & Manual is the most powerful authoring tool for technical
documentation. Boost your productivity! http://www.helpandmanual.com

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info. 

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat