Expertise
Olivier Carrère's expertise as a Senior Technical Writer (docs-as-code, DITA and structured authoring, documentation architecture, developer documentation, and CI/CD automation), demonstrated through selected documentation projects, case studies, and technical work.
Selected work
Section titled “Selected work”Documentation projects that demonstrate the areas of expertise below.
NuFirewall documentation (DITA XML)
Software product documentation cited by the press as a strength of the product: conref reuse strategy, conditional text, and a translation-ready source.
This portfolio, as a docs-as-code project
Bilingual EN/FR documentation in Git since 2014: reStructuredText and DITA XML, now Astro and Starlight, built by CI on every change.
A machine-readable documentation API
The same Markdown sources served to scripts and AI agents as llms.txt, Markdown mirrors, and JSON indexes, generated at build time.
DITA XML on multilingual projects
Solutions and tips from daily use of DITA XML on multilingual technical documentation.
Docs-as-code
Section titled “Docs-as-code”Integrating documentation into engineering workflows, with the same tools and lifecycle as the product.
Selected documentation
- Integrating documentation into development processes
- Version management systems - rustic but reliable
- Git: from file to content
- Using branches in source management systems
- A single repository?
- Repository
- Which repository for group work?
- Example: a basic docs-as-code workflow
- Example: a documentation review workflow
- Checklist: docs-as-code adoption
DITA & structured authoring
Section titled “DITA & structured authoring”Choosing how much structure content needs, then building modular, reusable sources in DITA XML.
Selected documentation
- Case study: NuFirewall documentation: reuse and translation strategy on a software product.
- Case studies in using DITA XML
- Structured and unstructured formats
- Structured DITA XML format
- Too complex a document architecture?
- Formats and tools
- Source format
- DITA XML and XSL-FO tutorials
Documentation architecture
Section titled “Documentation architecture”Structuring documentation sets so they scale and stay consistent as they grow.
Selected documentation
Developer & API documentation
Section titled “Developer & API documentation”Documentation for people who build on a product, kept accurate through product testing and engineering review.
Selected documentation
- Template: API documentation
- About this manual’s API: a working, static documentation API for scripts and AI agents.
- Testing products to document them
- Gathering information: working with engineers and other subject-matter experts.
- Checklist: technical review
- Template: documentation review request
Automation & CI/CD
Section titled “Automation & CI/CD”Building, checking, and publishing documentation automatically, and generating content from data instead of copying it by hand.
Selected documentation
- Example: a practical CI/CD pipeline for documentation
- Auto-insert data into a DITA XML file
- Automatically insert SQL data into a reStructuredText file
- Automatically insert data into a reStructuredText file
- Create different documents from the same sources using Jinja and with the object method
- Create different documents from the same ReST sources (conditional text)
- Regular expressions in Python
- sed: modify your text without opening your files
- The Raspberry Pi 3 as a documentation platform
- Managing a project from start to finish
- Target format: single-source publishing to PDF, HTML, and EPUB.
AI-assisted documentation
Section titled “AI-assisted documentation”Using AI in one part of the documentation workflow, always with human review: translation, a grounded documentation assistant, and a documentation API that scripts and AI agents can read.
Selected documentation
- Ask the documentation: an assistant that answers from this portfolio’s pages only, and lists the pages it used.
- The documentation API: llms.txt, Markdown mirrors, and JSON indexes generated at build time for scripts and AI agents.
- Translating legacy French docs to English with DeepL and GPT-4o: the workflow used to translate this portfolio, with Git diffs as a safety net.
- Reliability vs. latency: running Claude through the CLI: closing the feedback loop so the model can fix its own build errors.
- Persona prompting: check this before printing: structured technical review from a targeted prompt.
Documentation process & quality
Section titled “Documentation process & quality”Running documentation as an explicit, repeatable process, from project definition to delivery, with quality gates at each step.
Selected documentation
- Technical writing: an industrial process
- Project definition and the project plan template
- Content creation
- Validation and quality control
- Delivery
- Checklists: documentation quality, release readiness, documentation audit, and documentation migration
- Technical documentation: reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction
- From technical writing to technical communication
- KISS Principle of Simplicity
Multilingual documentation
Section titled “Multilingual documentation”Planning translation from the start of a project, and structuring sources so that translation stays affordable. I’m a translation school graduate with several years of technical translation experience.
Selected documentation
- Translation
- Using branches in source management systems: parallel language branches.
- Case study: NuFirewall documentation: translating conref-based DITA XML content.
Tools and formats
Section titled “Tools and formats”Tools and formats covered in these articles, or used to build this site:
Get in touch
Section titled “Get in touch”To discuss a technical writing role or project, contact me on LinkedIn. More background is in my professional profile ↗ and on the About page.