Category: Linux
There are dozens of ways to write technical documents for print and web. The Fedora Developers use MediaWiki, Publican, and Docbook. The openSUSE team uses the software package Daps (which uses different XML tools to produce PDF and XHTML). Serious technical writers use a combination of HTML5, XHTML, XML, Docbook, and DITA using an XML editor, IDE, or plain text editor. Meanwhile, some companies still use WYSIWYG applications like old-school Adobe products such as RoboHelp, InDesign, and FrameMaker. In short, there really is no one way of getting a document out into the world, technical or otherwise. Moreover, it's definitely easier with hundreds of open source applications such as Bluefish, Kate, LyX, and XML Copy Editor available for Linux. All you need is to choose one method and one application and you're good to go.
CherryTree is a hierarchical note-taking Linux application that can export to HTML, XML, and PDF. If you need to quickly create a simple and organized HTML technical document with a navigational tree then CherryTree is a great option. In the fictional multi-language product manual below, CherryTree's formatting and "cherry" nodes are used to make a logical easy-to-use quick start guide. The PNG image of the product is inserted into the document along with normal HTML objects such as horizontal lines, bullets, numbering, table of contents, anchors, navigational links, and text formatting. You can even add a code box if you're writing a manual for programming languages or markup. All of the above are added using CherryTree's toolbar without the need to modify XML or add any markup. In this example, the Spanish and French translations of the user guide are placed in separate nodes (I'm not a native speaker so the translations are extremely dodgy).
By default, CherryTree uses small cherries to identify nodes. To change them to standard bullet points, click Edit and then Preferences in the menu. Select Use bullets as Nodes icons. Once you export the CherryTree to HTML, it's also a simple matter to replace the images with your own.
Once you're done with your multi-language guide, click Export then Export to HTML. In the Involved Nodes window, select All the Tree and create a folder where the HTML files will be stored.
CherryTree will create an index.html file, separate HTML files for each page, and an Images folder. The resulting online manual has a well-written collapsible navigational tree to the left by default while retaining all markup and hyperlinks. Although the resulting HTML pages aren't as organized as hand-coded HTML, anyone with even rudimentary HTML experience can make modifications as needed and link a CSS file for additional formatting. You can even import the whole site to a website application such as Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expressions. Total work time? Less than an hour to write and layout the document and export to HTML then attach a basic CSS3 file.
Although CherryTree's Export to PDF isn't recommended due to its obvious limitations (links aren't retained and very little adjustments like page breaks can be made), the Export to HTML is more than adequate to get a quick online manual task done. Moreover, the resulting set of HTML files can easily be converted to PDF using other open source tools.
CherryTree is available on most Linux distribution software repositories and package managers including Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Mageia. The fictional manual was made using CherryTree on Lubuntu with drawings created using Corel Draw X by the author.
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