Top Ten Indispensable Technical Writing Tools
Post by Ivan
Walsh. Follow me on
Twitter.
 Adobe FrameMaker may be the most respected technical writing tool but
I've written most of my technical documents in Microsoft Word. Adobe
FrameMaker has it’s moment but it can also be rather 'old school' that
it beggar’s belief. I’ve used the same technical writing tools for the
last 5 years. A few products have come across my desk but nothing that
really blown me away. Here’s a run-down of what I use to write my
technical documents. No order of preference. Which should I keep? Which
should I replace?
Top Ten Technical Communication Tools
Microsoft Word
90% of my technical writing is in Microsoft Word. Like it or not,
this is the most popular technical writing tool on the planet. Adobe
FrameMaker might get the kudos but MS Word is what most all engineers,
testers, and other contributors use to write their document.
This is the one technical writing tool that I
can’t live without. Could you?
Adobe FrameMaker
Perfect for so-called ‘long documents’. I’ve used Adobe FrameMaker
for years before it finally crashed and that was my laptop’s fault. It’s
hard to beat on stability BUT the user interface is a dog.
Adobe FrameMaker is ideal for complex ‘books’ with
graphs, tables, and diagrams. Unlike Word, it retains the
settings and the master templates are a joy.
The problem with FrameMaker is…
It’s so hard (for me) to customize. I wish importing/exporting
documents, even to PDF, can be problematic. You would think Adobe would
have ironed out these areas buy now…
Camtasia
I use
Camtasia for creating movies, tutorials and screen
recordings. Techsmith products are a delight and this is no
exception. It lets me make movies, for example, of an application, add
sound, annotations and then export it to HTML or Flash. Arguably my fav
tool. Wish I had more reasons to use it!
Snagit
There are other cheaper and free screenshots tools out there Snagit
this is the only one I use to taking screen grabs/screenshots. The price
is not that much considering how much you get back in return. Also, the
folks at Techsmith are very helpful.
What’s so special?
I like the way I can take screenshots with one click (you can add it
to the web browser) and then crop, edit and modify the image in the
editor. Other features let you
batch edit images, for example, add
your website address or add a nice border to all images.
Adobe Photoshop
I started in DTP after college so this always has a soft spot with
me. Actually, doing the graphics is a nice counter-balance to writing
activities. I’ve also found the documents which look nice graphically
are more appreciated than plainer ‘image-free’ documents.
Visio
The only tool I’ve used for
process mapping and
diagramming process flow is Visio.
Smartdraw is better priced but I know this inside out and can get large
diagrams into Microsoft Word (edit, paste special) quickly without
destroying the document in the process.
Learning how to create process maps (correctly) was what showed me
how this works. Not the most intuitive of apps but wonderful when you
get into it.
Epic Editor
My most recent exposure to DITA and structured authoring was with
this tool. It’s very unforgiving (unlike Word for example) but once you
get the hang of it, you’ll really see its strengths. Expensive
but worth the investment if you need a heavy-weight tech
authoring tool. Ideal for creating content ‘chunks’, DITA maps and task
type information.
Notepad++
Wordpad is fine and I also have also used UltraEdit. Actually,
UltraEdit was the best tool I used but it became a commercial tool
somewhere along the way (or I kept getting nagware ads) so I gave up and
moved to NotePad++. I like the way it re-opens your last tabs
(i.e. files) so you can hit the ground running. The Line
Counter is also a nice touch.
RoboHelp
For creating help files and online documentation… well, I want to say
that it’s Doc-to-Help as this is what I started with in London all those
years back.
Sadly, Doc-to-Help seems to have lost market share
and RoboHelp has went from strength to strength. Once Adobe bought it,
it ploughed tons of resources into it, aligned it (somewhat) with Adobe
FrameMaker and it’s now the defacto tool for HAT. Or is it? Flare?
XML Spy
We all get dragged into XML at some point. This tool has a nice UI
that shows the tree structure of the tags and how they inter-relate. For
someone with zero XML knowledge, This helped me get my teeth the code,
create the docs, and get out without mangling the application.
Honorable mentions
- Adobe Acrobat
- Doc-to-Help
- InDesign (replacement for PageMaker)
- MadCap Flare
- SmartDraw
- Turbodemo (for creating screen recordings and tutorials)
- WhiteSmoke (more for
writing business English documents)
So, what tech writing tools you use?
Which of these tools do you think I should ditch? Is there a better
tool that Adobe FrameMaker for creating mammoth documents? Or, should I
drop Visio and use something open source?
About the Author: Ivan Walsh shares
Technical
Communication tips on
Klariti. Ivan also teaches
Startups how to
develop Online Business Plans on his Business Blog
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