Ask HN: Writing technical articles

[zemanel]

I've been meaning to start posting technical articles to my blog (posterous) and even writing a technical book has crossed my mind and was wondering about more experienced writers manage code samples, graphics and etc, meaning, what tools do you use to write (if so) the articles? Bundle text and samples on OpenOffice/GoogleDocs and post format the final result on-line?

Also do you have an suggestions on writing technical books, tooling and guide lines?

[tomasr]

Personally, I've always started with the main text, using just a text editor (Vim, being my preference).

What I usually do (and I'll admit it seems archaic) is just put placeholders in the text where I'll need a picture/graphic or a code sample, and then add those later in whatever final tool I end up using for publishing the article (example: Windows Live Writer, for posting to my blog).

Works fine for me, because it lets me concentrate more on the text than on the format/appearance or whatever.

[zemanel]

Yep, seems the way to do it. Not that i was particularly worried about format/appearance but mostly managing artifacts / embedded code samples, as in also, resistant to changes, because i've edited an article or two in online editors and in particular to embedding code, it can be a pain to edit.

[mgkimsal]

Currently for jsmag and groovymag, authors use an openoffice template. It's one of the few things that is cross-platform, but still allows for an editor to come in and make visual comments/notes/etc. We may move to another process in the next year, but OO has been a decent balance of functionality, cross-platform, and ease-of-use between multiple parties.

Even though it's just you right now, you may consider making sure you use something that others would be able to use - OO fits that bill. GoogleDocs - there's some appealing parts to that, but I'm not sure I want Google having that much access to my docs right now. :/

What sorts of technical topics are you planning to cover?

[zemanel]

Also, i've been using Google Docs, it's easier to share documents when needed and the information will go public anyway. There's also NVU, the O.S. HTML editor but in the past it had the nasty habit of inlining it's CSS and i doubt it has changed.

[zemanel]

I'm currently outlining an article about Dojo Toolkit features, think it's a great tool with not enough coverage online.

[jlees]

I've mostly written technical articles in-place in the Wordpress editor (backing up the raw html manually as even I don't have that much faith in The Cloud).

Longer-form, I've only ever used LaTeX, as the sort of articles I write are more equation-heavy and it's the only way to get them to look anywhere near decent. I had to submit an article once in MS Word format to a magazine and it broke my heart.