# About Olivier Carrère I write documentation for software products and the engineering teams that build them. This site is my technical writing practice: a practical guide to designing, writing, maintaining, and publishing technical documentation, based on my methods, projects, and experience. I maintain it as a docs-as-code project. My [professional profile](https://redaction-technique.org/) ↗ summarizes my expertise and selected work, and publishes my articles. > **Note** > > This page has two parts: [about me](#about-me), with my profile, approach, availability, and contact details, and [how this site is built](#how-this-site-is-built), its colophon. ## About me ### Profile - **Software product documentation.** I wrote the [NuFirewall documentation](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/formats/nufirewall-case-study/) in DITA XML; the press cited it as a notable strength of the product. - **Structured authoring.** I've used [DITA XML daily on multilingual projects](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/formats/dita-xml-case-studies/): topic typing, content reuse with conrefs, conditional text, and translation-ready sources. - **Docs-as-code.** This site has been written, versioned, and published from [Git](https://github.com/olivier-carrere/redaction-technique.org/) since 2014, through several source formats and toolchains. - **Translation.** I'm a translation school graduate with several years of technical translation experience, which shapes how I structure content for localization. ### How I approach documentation in engineering teams - Documentation ships with the product, follows the same lifecycle, and goes through the same quality control: see [integrating documentation into development processes](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/tech-writing-process/integrating-documentation-into-development/). - I test the product in real user conditions before documenting it, rather than compiling what I'm told: see [testing products to document them](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/tech-writing-process/testing-products/). - I gather information from engineers and other subject-matter experts, and ask for targeted technical reviews: see [gathering information](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/tech-writing-process/gathering-information/) and the [technical review checklist](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/toolkit/technical-review-checklist/). - Documentation changes go through branches and pull-request review, with technical and editorial review kept separate: see the [documentation review workflow](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/toolkit/example-review-workflow/). ### Free your information from its silos Flexible and reliable solutions free your information from siloed repositories where it is imprisoned and underutilized. Move beyond MS Word or FrameMaker to shift from documentation maintenance to managing the lifecycle of modular documentation projects. [Integrating documentation into development processes](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/tech-writing-process/integrating-documentation-into-development/) sets out what this requires: documentation that ships with the product, follows the same life cycles and quality control, with no vendor lock-in, free publishing chains, and fully automated layout. ### Areas of expertise The [Expertise](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/expertise/) page links each area to the articles that demonstrate it: - [Docs-as-code](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/expertise/#docs-as-code) - [DITA & structured authoring](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/expertise/#dita--structured-authoring) - [Documentation architecture](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/expertise/#documentation-architecture) - [Developer & API documentation](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/expertise/#developer--api-documentation) - [Automation & CI/CD](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/expertise/#automation--cicd) - [AI-assisted documentation](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/expertise/#ai-assisted-documentation) - [Documentation process & quality](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/expertise/#documentation-process--quality) - [Multilingual documentation](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/expertise/#multilingual-documentation) ### Availability My current Senior Technical Writer contract at Unity ends on October 1, 2026. I am open to new opportunities from October 2026. ### Get in touch - **LinkedIn:** [linkedin.com/in/carrereolivier](https://www.linkedin.com/in/carrereolivier/). The best way to contact me about a technical writing role or project. - **Source code of this site:** [github.com/olivier-carrere/redaction-technique.org](https://github.com/olivier-carrere/redaction-technique.org/) - **Professional profile, selected work, and articles:** [redaction-technique.org](https://redaction-technique.org/) ## How this site is built This part is the site's colophon. The [site history](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/site-history/) traces how this body of documentation moved from WordPress to Sphinx and then to Astro, and what happened to each page along the way. This site deals with technical writing processes and formats, so its [history and Git branches](https://github.com/olivier-carrere/redaction-technique.org/) are as relevant as its content. It covers the following formats, tools, and tasks: reStructuredText, DITA XML, Bash scripts, awk, sed, regular expressions, Python, version control, Git, compilation, Makefile, Ant, XSLT, layout, HTML, CSS, PDF, LaTeX, XSL-FO. Today, the site is written in MDX and built with Astro and Starlight. GitHub Actions builds it on every push and pull request, a test suite checks its content and API, and it is published in English and French. The same sources also feed a [machine-readable API](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/about-the-api/) and a grounded [documentation assistant](https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/ask/). > **Diagram: The stack this site is built on today** > > Layered stack of the technologies this documentation site currently runs on, from the bottom up: Git and GitHub for version control; MDX and TypeScript for content and code; Astro 7 with Starlight as the site framework; CSS custom properties for styling; the Node.js test runner and GitHub Actions for checks on every push; Vercel for build and hosting; and HTML, Markdown and llms.txt as published formats. **The stack this site is built on today** ### This site's sources are managed under Git This site was initially developed under WordPress. The inability to make cross-cutting changes or to have precise tracking of the content lifecycle under this CMS (Content Management System) led to a migration to the lightweight markup format reStructuredText. > **Diagram: Documentation life-cycle management platforms** > > Two documentation platforms shown as parallel stacks of the same seven layers, each row pairing an open-source tool with its partially open-source counterpart. From the operating system up: Linux and Windows; Git with Bugzilla and Componize/DocZone; reStructuredText and DITA XML; Python Sphinx and the DITA Open Toolkit; Make, Bash and sed against Ant; CSS, LaTeX, Inkscape and Emacs against CSS, XSLT, XSL-FO, Illustrator and XMetaL; and, as output, PDF, HTML and ePUB against PDF and HTML. **Documentation life-cycle management platforms** All versions of this site are managed under the decentralized version control software Git. Content, structure, or layout changes can now be: - grouped into coherent batches, - linked to a ticket in an issue tracker such as *Bugzilla* or *Jira*, - validated by peers, - shared between different versions of the documentation project, - undone in a single operation, etc. ### Source formats Version 1.1 of this site was available in three source formats, with different levels of features and complexity. > **Diagram: Feature and complexity levels of text formats** > > Quadrant chart plotting reStructuredText, DocBook, and DITA XML by complexity and features. reStructuredText is low on both axes. DocBook is more complex but still limited in features. DITA XML is both complex and feature-rich. **Feature and complexity levels of text formats** reStructuredText : reStructuredText is a lightweight wiki- or Markdown-style markup language that, combined with the Sphinx documentation generator, offers a good level of features. DITA XML : DITA XML is a complex, semantic, modular XML document architecture that delivers significant productivity gains through extensive content reuse. DocBook : DocBook is a semantic XML markup language whose feature-to-complexity ratio is today of limited interest. ### Target formats The Sphinx version compiled to the following formats: - PDF, - EPUB, - HTML. These different versions were generated from exactly the same sources. They present slight variations, however, implemented through a conditional text mechanism. For example, the following term varies according to the target format: | Target format | Term | |---------------|--------------| | PDF | document | | EPUB | e-book | | HTML | site | --- Source: https://docs.redaction-technique.org/en/about-this-blog/