Software for creating technical manuals
Software for creating technical manuals
(OP)
I am in the process of re-formatting and updating our company QC Manual. Currently the bulk of the manual is in MS Word with forms and other illustrations from separate Word, Excel and Adobe Acrobat files.
MS Word seem to be rather cumbersome at combining all these different file types into one single document. My question: is there a better software program to accomplish this task?
MS Word seem to be rather cumbersome at combining all these different file types into one single document. My question: is there a better software program to accomplish this task?





RE: Software for creating technical manuals
KENAT,
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RE: Software for creating technical manuals
RE: Software for creating technical manuals
RE: Software for creating technical manuals
For what you're working on, the key seems to be your naming convention so you can pick all the files from a list in one swell fwoop.
David
RE: Software for creating technical manuals
Chris
SolidWorks 08, CATIA V5
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion
RE: Software for creating technical manuals
"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."
Ben Loosli
RE: Software for creating technical manuals
V/R
Nathan
CAD Technician/ISO Director
Compass Systems, Inc. ( http://www.compass-sys-inc.com/ )
RE: Software for creating technical manuals
There are also packages out there that allow you to record the authorization or approval paperwork behind every sentence, if the audit trail is important.
Our department now has an engineering standard practices wiki where all engineers in the group can post their ideas on best practices. It is moderated.
RE: Software for creating technical manuals
Being a markup language, you write in your favorite text editor and then 'compile' it.
RE: Software for creating technical manuals
I use LaTeX here at home on my Linux box. I love it. It generates good looking documents. It creates good looking, navigatable PDFs, and navigatable web pages, albeit, not particularly good looking. There is a latex2rtf converter, but it is not very intelligent.
I strongly recommend as a reference A Guide to LaTeX2e - Document Preparation for Beginners and Advanced Users, by Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly.
Your changes of getting people to adopt LaTeX are slim to none. Here on Linux, I have learned to use the GNU programming tools, particularly GNU "make". I don't know how convenient LaTeX would be on a Windows box.
Graphics integration is not particularly convenient. There is no way to use other people's documents as is.
The OP should closely study the style menus under Microsoft Word, and the Free Software OpenOffice. This is a powerful formatting tool which few people understand and appreciate. It should not be particularly difficult to teach, and it may save you having to pay for expensive, hard to access software.
RE: Software for creating technical manuals
This is has some pretty powewrful graphics/drawing tools as well as a range of text effects and so on.
I can publish to web or publish as *pdf files with the option of making the pdf files compatible with various printing requirements or web publishing needs.
It has a full range of import facilities also.
I have used it to prepare technical manuals, brochures, tri-folds etc.
I even used it to design my earliest website (I now use Serif's web design package for that).
I find it a good value for money package.
Try here for some free versions to try out. You can upgarde to the latest usually at a competitive price.
http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/
If you go there, download Drawplus as well. Page Plus and Draw plus have very similar graphics but here are a few tools in the one that you may need. I often design and draw in Draw plus and cut and paste into pageplus.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Software for creating technical manuals
As you correctly pointed out, it works very well on a Linux box, which is what I primarilly use. In the instances where I am forced to use that other system, I spend quite a bit of time in Cygwin.
For Windows applications, I use a combination of Miktex and Lyx. Miktex is probably the best tex implementation for windows and Lyx is good at bridging the gap for those who are used to a WYSIWYG tool such as Word. Miktex has the nice feature that it will automatically search and find missing font packages for you. It still isn't as seemless as the --nix implentation, but it isn't half bad.
My advice for anyone who is reading this post, is the same as we were told as kids when faced with an unusual food: "try it, you'll like it". Once I started to get away from Word and realized that the pain was unnecessary, I have been loath to go back.
Thank you for the reference recommendation. I have read the "Not so short introduction to Latex" and "Latex for the impatient", but I didn't think either of them was that great.