

Ask HN: Writing technical articles  - zemanel

I've been meaning to start posting technical articles to my blog (posterous) and even writing a technical book has crossed my mind and was wondering about more experienced writers manage code samples, graphics and etc, meaning, what tools do you use to write (if so) the articles? Bundle text and samples on OpenOffice/GoogleDocs and post format the final result on-line?<p>Also do you have an suggestions on writing technical books, tooling and guide lines?
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tomasr
Personally, I've always started with the main text, using just a text editor
(Vim, being my preference).

What I usually do (and I'll admit it seems archaic) is just put placeholders
in the text where I'll need a picture/graphic or a code sample, and then add
those later in whatever final tool I end up using for publishing the article
(example: Windows Live Writer, for posting to my blog).

Works fine for me, because it lets me concentrate more on the text than on the
format/appearance or whatever.

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zemanel
Yep, seems the way to do it. Not that i was particularly worried about
format/appearance but mostly managing artifacts / embedded code samples, as in
also, resistant to changes, because i've edited an article or two in online
editors and in particular to embedding code, it can be a pain to edit.

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mgkimsal
Currently for jsmag and groovymag, authors use an openoffice template. It's
one of the few things that is cross-platform, but still allows for an editor
to come in and make visual comments/notes/etc. We may move to another process
in the next year, but OO has been a decent balance of functionality, cross-
platform, and ease-of-use between multiple parties.

Even though it's just _you_ right now, you may consider making sure you use
something that others would be able to use - OO fits that bill. GoogleDocs -
there's some appealing parts to that, but I'm not sure I want Google having
that much access to my docs right now. :/

What sorts of technical topics are you planning to cover?

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zemanel
I'm currently outlining an article about Dojo Toolkit features, think it's a
great tool with not enough coverage online.

~~~
mgkimsal
A bit OT, but if you'd be interested in writing something for jsmag, please
ping me at michael@gmail.com and/or register at <http://webdevpub.com/wdp>
Thanks.

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jlees
I've mostly written technical articles in-place in the Wordpress editor
(backing up the raw html manually as even I don't have that much faith in The
Cloud).

Longer-form, I've only ever used LaTeX, as the sort of articles I write are
more equation-heavy and it's the only way to get them to look anywhere near
decent. I had to submit an article once in MS Word format to a magazine and it
broke my heart.

