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Instruction manual creation recommendations?

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40hz:
All fair points. I just wonder, is it really ideal for something like documentation? I don't know, I'm honestly asking. :D

- Oshyan
-JavaJones (May 10, 2010, 11:06 PM)
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It's hard to say if it's ideal. It is a very good choice for a doc project. And it does get used for that. I have two clients that are heavily vested in LaTeX based authoring systems.

I think it all depends on how you think about and approach documentation.

IMHO a wiki is probably the most efficient way to create and maintain tech docs.

And you'll never know how much it pains me to say that.  ;D

Now If someone could just come up with a good way to convert a wiki into a decently formatted printed manual (with good typography) I'd feel far less of that pain.

    

superboyac:
Now If someone could just come up with a good way to convert a wiki into a decently formatted printed manual (with good typography) I'd feel far less of that pain.
-40hz (May 11, 2010, 09:17 AM)
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I second that!  That would be a great tool, to take a wiki and print a nice manual with it.  That's awesome.

PPLandry:
Have you considered using Wikispace or better yet WetPaint for the content and then when completed, print to PDF or better still, export and compile to chm ?

superboyac:
Have you considered using Wikispace or better yet WetPaint for the content and then when completed, print to PDF or better still, export and compile to chm ?
-PPLandry (May 11, 2010, 10:00 AM)
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I have not, but they look interesting.  The problem is I don't have much of a say in this.  Just by using "fancy" Word features like Styles is sort of pushing it.  I have to use Word documents.  Whatever I do, everyone has to think I did it all in Word without much extra stuff.

The other thing is that 90% of this has already been completed, in Word.  So it's not like I'm doing this from scratch.  I'm basically putting the finishing touches on it.  I probably should have mentioned that before. :-[

Armando:
Hi superboyac,

From what you're describing, it's a bit hard to know what would be the best solution. I think Pierre's suggestion would be the easiest to implement, that is if you don't worry about the formatting at first -- what I've noticed in these wiki collaboration software is that the documents quickly become a format mess. For the content though, it's pretty good.

I got your note on MS Word styles. Even if I don't use MS Word that much any more, I must say that using it without using styles means missing a lot of important features. Using styles is pretty straight forward, but once you've set a style, it's good to create a template and save it somewhere (as a *.dot file).

To use styles an Word outlines to their fullest, I found it works best to assign styles to levels and numberings. And then assign specific shortcut keys to these. I worked like that for many years and it's quick and easy.

Quickly :

1- In the "modify style" or "New Style" dialog, select your options -- but be careful with the "Style based on" option as this one means that modifying one style will modify the other.....

I tend to name my styles with level numbers : xyz1 xyz2 xyz3 xyz4 xyz5, or just use the MS provided level1, 2, 3, 4...
 
2- Then After everything has been set to your liking, link that style to an Outline Numbered scheme : Format--> Numbering-->Outline Numbered. Click on "Customize". You have many options there. The "level" Parameter is important as it will assign a level to your style, which will be usefull when you use the document map to navigate into a long document.

3- Then assign shortcuts to these styles : right click on a toolbar --> customize, then in the dialog, select  the "Options" tab, go to categories and select styles.  Assign specific keyb. short .there. (I use ctrl-0 to 9)

Not sure if that can be helpful. I know it's really nothing special and maybe laughable, but who knows.

[ EDIt : and then, use the "view" (menu) --> "Document map" feature to navigate into your document (assigning a shortcut to that is a good idea too). You can also work in Outline mode, which allows to move whole sections (levels) around, etc. Word has a pretty good outline I find. It's not IQ or anything, but it works well if one is working with a lot of text. ]

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