RE: Suggestions for free/cheap/Open Source documentation for Web Site& PDF?

["Sarah Stegall" <sstegall -at- bivio -dot- net>]

All of my technical documentation is done in OpenOffice. (We're too
cheap to buy Frame. :) One document can be output to HTML, PDF, XML,
Microsoft Word .DOC, and a host of other formats; OpenOffice also opens
and reads most of these formatted files. It is possible to export a
formatted text document to XHTML, LaTex, BibTex and MediaWiki formats.
OpenOffice includes a file conversion program which has never failed me.
The program is free, runs on Windows, Mac and Linux (completely
interchangeable among those platforms), and is editable. An installer
for most platforms is available; it takes me less than half an hour to
download, unzip and install the entire program. The interface is very
similar to the Microsoft Office suite, so users have a minimal learning
curve. I've used this program for many years seamlessly. 

I will warn you of one problem: OpenOffice has a problem with
auto-numbering. If you have several numbered paragraphs and insert an
un-numbered paragraph between them, it will restart the numbering. It's
a nuisance, but since I number all my my numbered items by hand anyway,
I live with it. Otherwise, this is a heck of a workhorse program. 

And it costs nothing to try. Good luck.

Sarah

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+sstegall=bivio -dot- net -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+sstegall=bivio -dot- net -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Robert Lauriston
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 8:41 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Suggestions for free/cheap/Open Source documentation for
Web Site& PDF?

OpenOffice is an interesting suggestion. DocBook XML is among its
"save as" choices. The source code includes a help authoring
environment, so the help should serve as a sample project.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! 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