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On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 5:03 AM, Mark Giffin <mgiffin -at- earthlink -dot- net> wrote:
> I'm fairly sure that you can use Sphinx with programming languages other
> than Python. Or even without a programming language. If you're interested
> in Sphinx I suggest you check this out.
>
> Mark Giffin
> Mark Giffin Consulting, Inc.
>http://markgiffin.com/
>
> On 2/19/2015 6:50 PM, Ryan Young wrote:
>
>> Sphinx sounds pretty great, Elisa. Your situation sounds similar to mine,
>> where you're working very closely with the developers. I don't work with
>> any Python guys (that I know of), but they'd probably like
>> ReStructuredText.
>>
>> Thank you and everyone else on this thread for your suggestions. Much
>> appreciated.
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 19, 2015 at 11:00 AM, Elisa R. Sawyer <elisawyer -at- gmail -dot- com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Ryan,
>>>
>>> You've already gotten a few good suggestions, and I have one add to the
>>> list.
>>>
>>> Markdown is by design simple and therefore limited. LaTeX allows for
>>> precise formatting, but it might be difficult to get your build to create
>>> pdf's of the quality you want using Markdown. Moving toward Docbook is
>>> one
>>> possibility, but there is another, somewhat more developer-friendly
>>> solution--ReStructuredText using Sphinx, which can be considered a
>>> slightly
>>> more grown-up version of Markdown:
>>>
>>> You can find information on several Web sites:
>>>
>>> http://sphinx-doc.org/contents.html
>>> http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
>>> http://pedrokroger.net/using-sphinx-write-technical-books/
>>>
>>> To get a pdf from Sphinx you need to install a pdflatex plugin. The
>>> details of what you need vary with operating system.
>>>
>>> I inherited a set of docs that were created using Sphinx and had to find
>>> my way around the process of editing in .rst files and building both HTML
>>> and pdf output. I'm using Sublime Text with several plugins, on a Mac
>>> with
>>> OS X Yosemite. I'm still learning some of the finer points but think that
>>> this has a lot of potential.
>>>
>>> In my case, I discovered that I can get some developer input when I hit a
>>> road block with a specific issue, which makes the process fun and
>>> interesting. This happens because Sphinx is seen as a tool for python
>>> developers. I don't think that it's any more difficult to tweak the build
>>> for good pdf's from this setup than it is to tweak DITA-OT or Docbook.
>>>
>>> -Elisa
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 8:56 PM, Ryan Young <ryangyoung -at- gmail -dot- com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> At my new job, what documentation there is is in Markdown. The engineers
>>>> set up a script using pandoc to create some functional PDF output. The
>>>> problem is that pandoc requires LaTex to produce the PDF, which doesn't
>>>> give me very much control of things like the location of images in the
>>>> document (or the ability to create links).
>>>>
>>>> I've played around with Atom and SublimeText, but neither gives me all
>>>> that
>>>> much more control over the PDF output. I've also suggested the company
>>>> start using Confluence, which would solve the problem, but it seems like
>>>> that will take a bit of planning.
>>>>
>>>> Any suggestions?
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>>>> &
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>>>> http://bit.ly/doctohelp2015
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>>>
>>> --
>>> Elisa Rood Sawyer
>>> ~~~~~^~~~~~
>>> Technical and Creative Writer
>>> "Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today." Mark Twain
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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Doc-To-Help: The Quickest Way to Author and Publish Online Help, Policy & Procedure Guides, eBooks, and more using Microsoft Word | http://bit.ly/doctohelp2015