Technical documentation as an engineering practice
For technical writers and documentation teams who want to reduce costs, automate content, and integrate docs into development workflows.
Whether you’re choosing between DITA XML and Markdown, moving to a docs-as-code workflow, or integrating documentation into a CI/CD pipeline — these guides cover the methods, formats, and tools that make technical documentation a sustainable, scalable practice.
Technical writing: An industrial process
Section titled “Technical writing: An industrial process” Project definition Communicating technical information without knowing to whom or for what purpose is a futile effort.
Integrating documentation into development Documentation is part of software.
Git: from file to content With Git, think content rather than files: it's simpler and avoids many difficulties.
Explore all 18 articles → Source formats, repositories, version control, translation, delivery, and more.
Structured DITA XML format
Section titled “Structured DITA XML format” Structured and unstructured formats The information contained in a technical document can be categorized according to its meaning.
From document to modular document base DITA XML offers a way to move from the book model to the modular document base model.
Case study: NuFirewall documentation NuFirewall's documentation, perceived by the press as one of the product's strong points, was produced using DITA XML.
Explore all 5 articles → Structured formats, DITA XML use cases, and document architecture trade-offs.
Reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction
Section titled “Reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction” From copywriting to technical communication Technical communication is often reduced to technical writing, involved downstream of sales.
The three levels of technical documentation If we compare technical documentation to a garden, we can classify it into three levels of care and ambition.
Formats and tools When a company industrializes technical writing, the key issue is not the tool but the underlying format.
Explore all 5 articles → KISS principle, PDF indexes, and the business case for structured documentation.
Technology watch
Section titled “Technology watch” DITA XML and XSL-FO tutorials DITA XML lets you create documents without worrying about their final appearance on different media.
Conditional text with Sphinx Generate document variants from the same ReST sources with Sphinx conditional text.
Regular expressions in Python Python's regular expression library helps you manipulate text, especially if you're not familiar with sed or awk.
Explore all 11 articles → Jinja templating, SQL automation, sed, and documentation toolchains.