Ask HN: Writing and Variables

[thangalin]

Microsoft Word makes using variables in documentation a labyrinthine act: over a dozen steps to insert variables into documents, to say nothing about organizing them. For a sci-fi book I'm writing, I developed a text editor that allows me to insert variable names into a document with ease. This allows me to make the character sheet part of the writing process. Here's a demo video of the concept:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_dFd6UhdV8

Why is applying the DRY principle to documentation not more prevalent?

[chalst]

It's straightforward in the text-based formats used to create man pages (troff) and in subsequent native documentation formats: Texinfo, various Wiki and Markdown-inspired syntaxes, etc. It might be that relatively little documentation is created in Word by people who want the process to be as efficient as possible (as opposed to copy-writers who charge by the hour).