
Ask HN: Your favorite technical document writing application - MVorlm
Hey HN,
I&#x27;m looking for an application(or website) that lets me easily create technical documents. e.g Documenting a current feature behavior for managers(\w graphs &amp; charts).<p>OSX applications preferable, but feel free to recommend apps for other OSs for fellow HN readers :)
======
jstewartmobile
I've heard good things about this:
[https://ia.net/writer/](https://ia.net/writer/) It does things Ted-Nelson-
style with transclusions. It's android/iOS, so I won't touch it, but people
say nice things.

Personally, I like GitHub flavored markdown and a text editor. There are
programs in all of the popular languages to convert that to HTML.

We tried MS Word years ago. The zipped 2007+ format makes the git repository
blow up, so we dropped it.

------
tetek
pages, free, clear, easy to build block/diagrams

------
git-pull
Documentation Utilities (aka Docutils):
[http://docutils.sourceforge.net/](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/). Allows
reStructuredText markup, programming of custom "roles" and "directives", HTML
and PDF creation

Sphinx Doc: [http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/](http://www.sphinx-
doc.org/en/stable/). Builds on top of Docutils. Allows API documentation
([http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/ext/autodoc.html](http://www.sphinx-
doc.org/en/stable/ext/autodoc.html)) and cross-documentation linking via
intersphinx ([http://www.sphinx-
doc.org/en/stable/ext/intersphinx.html](http://www.sphinx-
doc.org/en/stable/ext/intersphinx.html)). epub, PDF, and html output.

I've created mini technical manuals at previous workplaces using sphinx.

More clickables:

For graphs, grab aafig: [https://pythonhosted.org/sphinxcontrib-
aafig/](https://pythonhosted.org/sphinxcontrib-aafig/) or graphviz
[http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/ext/graphviz.html](http://www.sphinx-
doc.org/en/stable/ext/graphviz.html)

For enhanced python documentation (numpy and google style api docs)
[http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/ext/napoleon.html](http://www.sphinx-
doc.org/en/stable/ext/napoleon.html)

For creating your own API docs outside of python use sphinx "domains"
([http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/domains.html](http://www.sphinx-
doc.org/en/stable/domains.html)):

\- HTTP: [https://github.com/deceze/Sphinx-HTTP-
domain](https://github.com/deceze/Sphinx-HTTP-domain)

\- .NET: [https://github.com/rtfd/sphinxcontrib-
dotnetdomain](https://github.com/rtfd/sphinxcontrib-dotnetdomain)

\- JS: [http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/domains.html#the-
javascr...](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/domains.html#the-javascript-
domain)

\- C++: [http://www.sphinx-
doc.org/en/stable/domains.html#id2](http://www.sphinx-
doc.org/en/stable/domains.html#id2)

\- C: [http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/domains.html#the-c-
domai...](http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/domains.html#the-c-domain)

\- Scala: [https://pythonhosted.org/sphinxcontrib-
scaladomain/](https://pythonhosted.org/sphinxcontrib-scaladomain/)

\- golang: [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/sphinxcontrib-
golangdomain](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/sphinxcontrib-golangdomain)

------
leetintin
google keep :)

