Comments on: My Top Ten Favorite Technical Writing Tools

By: Kate Winslet’s 7 Secret Ways to Revise Technical Documents | I Heart Technical Writing, Tips, Tools and Templates for Technical Writers

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 04:52:21 +0000

[...] – Technical Writing involves writing multiple drafts. This means that after each draft, you need to check that the edits have been included in the [...]

By: Ivan Walsh

Ivan Walsh — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 15:33:03 +0000

Hey Mike,
Forehelp was a great little tool. Real shame that they dropped the ball. RoboHelp is fine but it costs so much and many smaller end customers can’t afford it.
PSP was my weapon of choice when I did web design years back. It’s got all the nice little touches. I use Snagit mostly out of habit and don’t have the time/drive to learn another s/shot product.
We used a free open source tool at IBM for s/shots that was great. Got it on Sourceforge. Forget the name…
Re: Word, I think it’s fine. I've written 200 page documents that worked for everyone, e.g. review, publishing etc.
Adobe FrameMaker locks everyone bar the technical writer out of the equation. I guess that makes sense if you want to protect your turf, so to speak, but otherwise Word’s fine.
Take care,
Ivan

By: Mike Starr

Mike Starr — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:35:09 +0000

I'm definitely with you on Microsoft Word; it's been my primary tool for technical communication for a number of years now. I've used FrameMaker and you're right... the UI is really clunky. I love the way I can customize the bejeezus out of Microsoft Word.

I, too, started help authoring with ForeHelp; it was a really good tool and at the time, I felt it beat the snot out of RoboHelp but they just never invested enough in marketing to prevent their market share from dwindling to the point where they ended up going out of business.

I've been using Paint Shop Pro for editing images and never felt SnagIt added any value (for me) with respect to screen captures. My typical process is {Alt} + {PrntScreen} then paste into Paint Shop Pro, If I need to, I can record macros in Paint Shop Pro to handle repetitive image manipulation. It's pretty much as powerful as PhotoShop but a lot cheaper.

By: Kate Winslet’s 7 Ways to Checking Technical Documents | Microsoft Word Tips & Tricks

Fri, 28 May 2010 02:32:02 +0000

[...] – Technical Writing involves writing multiple drafts. This means that after each draft, you need to check that the edits have been included in the [...]

By: oytuntez

oytuntez — Thu, 06 May 2010 17:37:17 +0000

Thank you.
But i already have proper tools for translation. I'd like to know if there is any tool for technical writing, e.g. to remind me a similar sentence that i wrote before on the same document…

I would appreciate it.

By: Ivan Walsh

Ivan Walsh — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:03:51 +0000

I don’t know, to be honest.
I have some friends who translate technical documents, mostly for Japan. I'll ask them and see if they use any specialized tools.

By: oytuntez

oytuntez — Wed, 05 May 2010 20:33:03 +0000

There is a tool for translation. It's called TRADOS and there are many examples on this type softwares. It makes it easier to translate technical writings like manuals, as it reminds you what you had written before as a correspondance to an alike sentence.

Is there a tool like this for technical writing? To remind me the structure of similar sentences, so that we can be more adequate in our form and style?

By: Ivan Walsh

Ivan Walsh — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:36:17 +0000

Re: Robohelp. Yep, I've found Adobe very unhelpful to deal with. Lousy attitude.

Techsmith & ComponentOne are much more helpful.

By: Ivan Walsh

Ivan Walsh — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:33:29 +0000

Hey Bill,
I upgraded to Camtasia 6 and, after a few hitches, found ways to make my movies that little bit quicker and better (I hope).
One is that it allows you to import .mov files in – rather than convert – and work on it directly.
The other is that I now have better control of the timeline. It also seems to compress the videos much faster. The YouTube presets also help.

By: BillKerschbaum

BillKerschbaum — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 23:52:06 +0000

Hi, Ivan. Nice list. I've recently been using Camtasia and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I'd like to see a couple features, but it's easy to use and it produces a nice looking video. Also like Visio quite a bit – it makes flow charting a lot of fun.

Gotta take exception on RoboHelp, though. RH may have the lion's share of the market, but I wouldn't list it as a favorite application. All I do is struggle with it to do basic tasks (import decent-looking images, create a TOC, etc.). Plus, their user/tech support is horrible!

By: Ivan Walsh

Ivan Walsh — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:56:05 +0000

Buy and Sell magazine was the best way to get software when I was in Europe. Do they have something like that where you are? Kind of like offline ebay.

By: Craig

Craig — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:20:03 +0000

That's what I'm using now. Problem is, even though I can prep docs to be opened by other apps, such as Word, the members of my Writers Group seem to have problems opening the exports of writing samples I sent out. Hence, my search for an inexpensive copy of Word.

By: Ivan Walsh

Ivan Walsh — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:52:13 +0000

Why not ‘go rogue’ and try Open Office?
I tried to use Google Docs last year but gave up as there was no import option.

By: Craig

Craig — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:24:30 +0000

I agree with you about Word, but my new home computer is a rebuilt second-hand Windows XP — that doesn't have MS Office. I don't have Word, but I need it.

Like everyone else, I'm following a strict budget these days. Where can I find a reasonably priced copy of MS Office 2003 to download?

By: Ivan Walsh

Ivan Walsh — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 04:36:38 +0000

Adobe FrameMaker could have been the killer app if Adobe put the funds into it. I think they have went with InDesign instead.

By: tjrainey

tjrainey — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:46:39 +0000

MadCap Flare has replaced many combinations of Word/Frame/Webworks/Robohelp for me. Does everything I need for the PDF and varying help outputs I need to produce.
Word was just way too unreliable time and again. Frame was stable, but like you said, had an ugly interface.

By: Kai

Kai — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:08:19 +0000

Oh, I DO use Word for word processing – and more. I just wouldn't put it on a list of favorite tools of mine…

By: Ivan Walsh

Ivan Walsh — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:05:43 +0000

What tool do you use for word-processing? I've looked at others, like Open Office, and not seen enough to make the switch.
Notepad++ is terrific. Love the advanced cut/paste functions.
Flare is v good and not that different that RoboHelp, unless it’s changed in the last few releases. Havent upgraded in a while.
Will download PlainEdit now. Sounds impressive.

By: Kai

Kai — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 15:52:13 +0000

I'd call Word an okay word processor, but because it's document-based, it's really obnoxious to use for topic-based writing. I've yet to see a working example of several documents reuse/share the same topics seamlessly and easily. Same with any online deliverables except for PDF. Word to HTML or CHM is a nightmare, in my experience.

For a topic-based HAT, I prefer Flare (though I've never worked with RoboHelp). I especially appreciate that all topics and all settings are open XHTML. So if the (usually reliable) interface won't let me do what I need, I can always tweak the code.

For an ASCII text editor, I actually prefer PlainEdit, since I don’t do much coding. For plain text wrangling, it can’t be beat. You can convert text in more ways than I ever had use for, between special characters and HTML, between ANSI, ASCII and UTF-8. You can remove trailing spaces and lines containing certain characters. You can sort all lines from A to Z or inversely. And it can search and replace regular expressions. I'd recommend Notepad++, iIf you are coding and want syntax support for programming languages.

By: Ivan Walsh

Ivan Walsh — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:09:27 +0000

Hi Yaakov
It’s one of those tools I've always wanted to use but the client never had onsite. I actually started with ForeHelp all those years ago, if you remember it, which was also quite good. Seems to be gone now.