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RE: Formats for cross-platform documentation?

Subject: RE: Formats for cross-platform documentation?
From: Joel Konkle-Parker <joel -dot- j -dot- konkle-parker -at- nasa -dot- gov>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 12:33:43 -0400


At 12:20 PM 6/17/2004, Janet Swisher wrote:

>Well, I guess what I was trying to get at was: is there a method
>particularly suited to the things I wish to do (informal engineer-to-
>engineer manuals for in-house cross-platform software)? In your
>experience, which way is the "best" way, for a variety of reasons?

>I don't have any experience with formatting user guides and such, so I'm
>trying to get some expert opinions about things I should look into,
>whether it be certain technologies, methods, styles, whatever.

If it really is an "informal engineer-to-engineer" situation, and likely to
stay that way, you might consider using a Wiki. That would make it easy for
any engineer to add new content, without knowing about page or web layout
programs. Most Wikis use some variant of "structured text", which is plain
text in which you use indenting for sectioning, asterisks for emphasis, and
so on; the Wiki converts this simple, readable markup to HTML for display.

Yes, I would really like to do a Wiki-type setup, but our webserver is in the operating room, and it doesn't look good.

As of right now, I've starting writing in Word rather than OpenOffice.org (that's the "official standard", and I'd rather not deal with interoperability stuff later on). Having only used Word for letters and reports in the past, I'm kind of at a loss as to structuring such a document (how to do tables of contents, chapters, indices, etc.). Do you have any suggestions of where to look for some structural and semantic Word tips? This is Word 2000.

Thanks for the help, I'm glad I found this list.



Joel Konkle-Parker

NASA Langley Research Center
Vehicle Analysis Branch

Phone [757-864-4446]
E-mail [joel -dot- j -dot- konkle-parker -at- nasa -dot- gov]

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References:
RE: Formats for cross-platform documentation?: From: Janet Swisher

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