Posts tagged tools
I'm a self-taught programmer which means I started writing software by sitting down at an IDE and hammering out some code. When my decisions ultimately coded me into a corner I would refactor and r...
I currently spend a good deal of time over at Code Review and I would love to improve the quality of the reviews I write. Can you give me any insight into the structure or approach you use when wri...
I have no degree and I cannot afford to have one, however, I would really love to get into technical writing because I love writing and I am interested in web and software development. Right now, I...
I am new to programming and am entirely self-taught. I have reached a point in my writing where a solid grasp of documentation standards would be greatly beneficial. My question is not how to add d...
I have a highly flexible software product consisting of a series of loosely coupled microservices. Each component is effective at a single job, but may be dependent on inputs from other services. I...
We use doxygen to generate API (reference) documentation for our code. We have a small Java API and a large C++ API. The usual tool of choice for Java APIs is Javadoc, but doxygen can do both and...
My team uses MadCap Flare to produce a large body of documentation (thousands of topics). The source is "Flare HTML", HTML with some Flare additions (for variables, admonitions, snippets, and so o...
Say you want to talk about a piece of command-line software, like make or bash or the cp command. These commands are all lower-case, and case-sensitive (i.e. won't work on the computer if you capit...
I'm looking for an (online) tool to convert a long list of DOI's (1000+) into citation information. There are several tools that let you enter one DOI at a time, such as doi2bib or Crossref but tho...
I'm looking at writing a book with code samples, hints, and other stuff, and was wondering what type of word processor would be recommended for writing a book that's 50+ pages (including code sampl...
I'm writing a guide to give step-by-step instructions to complete some tasks on the computer. At some points, I need to indicate pressing keys on the keyboard; how may I format the letter/symbol to...
I'm looking to buy some software for technical document authoring with DITA. The tech writing group will have at least 5-10 users, writing 100-pages long documents for several products in various l...
In many companies I've seen it that more than 1 person are writing at the same documentation (be it user manual or technical documentation) for a computer application. What I have seen in usage wa...
My team uses MadCap Flare for documentation and we have an editor on the team. When a writer is ready, we assemble a review package in Flare and send it to the editor, and she makes changes and se...
We are planning to create a user guide for internal use only. It's 150-page document in Word for a self-developed SW tool. The user guide will require constant update. No translation is needed. We ...
Programmers can write comments in code that can be automatically turned into API documentation (like Javadoc). All I have to do is add some comments explaining what a class or method does and what...
My company currently maintains our technical documentation (User's Guide) in Google Docs. With each release I produce a PDF that we host on our website. Here are the features of Google Docs that w...
In technical documentation, sometimes the tool's automatic hyphenation makes a bad break in the middle of a term, like the name of an environment variable or function. In these cases I would rathe...
I am describing a database for a scientific publication. The database has many tables, and each table has fields (spreadsheet columns) and records (rows). I spend a lot of time discussing tables a...
Over on another site we're talking about taking some of our content (on a particular theme) and re-packaging it as a printable PDF. (The primary use case is paper.) This wouldn't be a straight du...
I'm interested in newer software/software stack to use in writing technical papers. For the longest time I have been use LaTeX to handle this but in looking at getting longer pieces published, such...
Our ~1500-page documentation set contains numerous screen shots and related graphics (schematics, flow diagrams, etc). Sometimes the user interface changes and we have to update all the affected g...
I've set up styles so that my paragraphs under level 4 headings stick together. To this end, I've set "Widow/Orphan control", "Keep with next", and "Keep lines together" for both the 4th heading st...
Sorry if this question has been asked a lot I've been writing for a year now and have used both Google docs and Evernote and found them both to be lacking Google docs: I'm a writer who likes to f...
I am looking for a minimalistic word editor for my creative writing. Basically I would like something like the “notes” app on OSX just with the option to save your writing as a separate file. Does ...
Good time of the day, community! Hope, that my post won't irritate too much, but rather will be helpful for someone in future. I already made some progress myself (I mean some raw unfinished vers...
I am on the hunt for software options that may have gotten drowned out in my google searches by emacs, vim, and wordgrinder to use as a word processor in a Raspbian Terminal environment. The goal ...
TLDR: Tips and Tricks for storyboarding a novel? For someone who can't draw well enough to do the "Draw and describe method" Hello, having read the "Storyboard a Novel?" as well as some sources ...
I have to following tools available, looking for other options. Microsoft Word Sublime Text Editor Atom Visual Code I'm a Software Engineer, who is interested in writing. Thanks in advance.
I have been looking for a word that rhymes with post with similar meaning to a school. But I go to thesaurus.com, sounding the words on my head for results under "school" and none rhyme. I then tr...
Looking for software recommendation. I am hoping someone can help me, I am developing a book for children that covers mental illness and I want it to be flexible based on demographic or personal d...
I am writing a document with several chapters. Each chapter title uses heading 1 and the chapters have the numbers 1 to 8. All chapters are using header 1 so that I can build a table of contents. ...
I want to write a short story (and maybe later a book) together with a colleague from work. Is there an online service which we can use to do this in a convenient way? Useful features would be (n...
I am writing a text with a lot of foreign words, and MS Word complained that there were too many ‘errors’ and stopped checking spelling. Is there a way to force spellchecking? (Short of creating a ...
This question is somewhat inspired by Is there a need for better software for writers? I'm currently using Google Docs for writing, and it's a great tool: simple enough, has some nice features, cl...
Inspired by this question: Is there a need for better software for writers? I have an IDE¹ related question about software that can assist writers. Is there a tool to (easily) turn technical wri...
I'm starting to write a book and I am considering to use the iBooks Author app since I tend to like Apple products. Through my research, I learned I can publish it into iBooks, export it for iBooks...
The Context: I often write through a blog platform. However, sometimes I feel that the content is too long and deep and sometimes I feel the content is written only on a surface-level about a topic...
I generally use PowerPoint for outlining my scenes (prose, not script). I put a general description of what the scene is on the slide, and then give more details in the notes section. I like that I...
I love accessibility, so any show that is 100% scripted, my script = the transcript, and I'm happy to share it. For podcasts with a cohost, there's no easy transcription software, and fiverr is ac...
I write my dialog in this format: Joe: Why are you wearing a shoe on your head? Sam: Mind your own damn business! What's annoying here is that it doesn't automatically capitalize the word follow...
Let's say I have a character in my story simply called "Slime Monster". With every instance of these two words, I want both words to be capitalized and to be corrected as a pair, so if I mistype it...
Are there any software tools available that will help me dissect my meter? I have always been extremely poor at scansion and while my writing doesn't suffer terribly for it, it makes writing strict...
I am a happy user of an Underwood 5, an old typewriter from the beginning of the XX century. I use it to type letters, short stories, greeting cards, and labels. I am now planning to try and type...
Does anyone use Scrivener cross OS? I just got my first MacBook and installed Scrivener, but then because it's a newer version (3) it wants to update the Scrivener files. Which would be fine, but I...
I admit to finding this an insurmountable task. My novel has dozens of characters. My first problem wasn't keeping track of them, but creating them. Modern Day: My 20th century characters were ...
I'm formatting a play using Pages on macOS. I cannot figure out how to get character names to be associated with their dialogue. I'm formatting like [centered] JOHN [\centered] Yes, that’s me...
I did an install of Scrivener Version: 1.9.9.0 - 03 Oct 2018 on a Windows 10 computer. In the paste, I know I used to be able to copy formatted text from any source and paste it as plain text into...
At the moment I'm writing my master-thesis in the area of information systems. Because I developed some code to demonstrate my approach, I also mention some software tools in my proof-of-concept se...
