What programs do you use for creating technical documents???.....

[Smokey]

What program do you guys use for creating technical documents like user manuals? 

Keeping formatting consistent in Word/Libreoffice-writer is seriously painful.  Graphics seem to always get botched, especially when exporting to PDF.

What's the better way?

[b_force]

I don't understand why you say that graphics are getting botched.
In my past I have been making a sh*t load of reports (three times a week with an average of 10-25 pages).
Never encountered a problem when exporting to PDF.

Going from one program to another, between Office 2003, 2007, new ones and even more between Microsoft and LibreOffice is on the other hand a disaster.
In the science world a lot of people use LaTeX, because you have complete freedom.

[Smokey]

Specifically I end up putting a lot of dxf graphics in and they never seem to come out right in the conversions. 

[nctnico]

I create drawings with MS Visio and then paste into Word. I don't even bother trying that with OpenOffice.

[StefanHamminga]

For documents that need to look better than a regular Word document I like to use Scribus.
There is a bit of a learning curve but you have a lot more control over what happens with your output. It's not a pleasure for a 1000 page document though (getting better with the recently added 'Story Editor'). SVG support is pretty good compared to the office suites and generated PDFs tend to look a lot nicer than above mentioned alternatives.

If you have a lot of repetition and stick to one standard way to present images / content you could use a document generator like pandoc. Write your manual / guide / etc in Markdown and compile at will. Unbeatable for write speed once dialed in. I've created very nice looking eBooks like this.

If neither one of those will do I'd use Word, it's pretty decent if you avoid manual formatting like the plague it is.

[free_electron]

Word for text , Adobe Illustrator for drawing ( vector drawings ) Adobe InDesign for makeup.

[donmr]

I use Inkscape for drawings (except schematics or real CAD drawings).  It can export PNG at any resolution.
Most document composing tools (even word processors) can include PNG files.

Only Scribus can read Inkscape's SVG and even then with some difficulty.  SVG is just not well standardised.

[JacquesBBB]

Latex + illustrator

[Someone]

Word for text , Adobe Illustrator for drawing ( vector drawings ) Adobe InDesign for makeup.

This is how people need to setup the workflow if they want the polished "professional" look from documents, trying to get it all balanced in a single wysiwyg editor is just too time-consuming and likely to have integration issues with different formats. Scribus is getting some good traction for the layout side so an opensource/free workflow is finally achievable with OO/Inkscape/Gimp/Scribus

[mathsquid]

I use LaTeX for anything that needs to look professional, except for letters.  When I need to write a recommendation letter or something similar, I write it and save it as a plain text file, but I will put it into Word to adjust the pagination and print it.

For presentations, it depends on the type.  I'll use LaTeX/Beamer for conference presentations or for most things I present in class, but sometimes it's easier to throw together a powerpoint--especially if the presentation has a lot of pictures in it.  However, I always convert the powerpoint to a PDF so I know it will run on whatever computer I'm using to give the presentation.

[Messtechniker]

Word for text , Adobe Illustrator for drawing ( vector drawings ) Adobe InDesign for makeup.

Simply the way to go. Consider Word as a word processor with added layout functions.
Will do for simple layouts (single column) up to say 4 to 8 standard pages with few
figures and no footnotes avoiding most of the automation offered like Table of Contents,
indexing, macros, changing headers, format templates and footers.

The only thing that works really well and which is really flexible in Word (all versions)
is Tables. Once you have seen Word suddenly stack up all images (not contained in a
table box) on top of each other on one page or completely mess up your footnotes
you will be convinced.

So for higher requirements use a common DTP programme as recommended here.
Even any Freeware DTP programme will be better than Word provided you will not
need to exchange native DTP documents.

I've been through most of them - Started in the 80ies with a Xerox system with its
Mesa GUI operating system long before the Apple GUI and Windows GUI were born;
then Ventura Publisher on XT clones running Windows 3.1 followed by Pagemaker,
Quark Express, Framemaker and Indesign.
Just my experience.

Yours Messtechniker

[ivaylo]

Jupyter Notebooks for periodic (monthly, quarterly, etc) reports, LucidChart for whatever I can't plot with that.

[Pjotr]

Many people find MS Publisher a toy. Actually, for regular reports and manuals that need an extra touch up, it is just right. It comes as part of MS Office bundles but is often overlooked. Easy to learn without too many unnecessary complex handles.

[prasimix]

The thing is that people in OpenOffice Writer is not pushed to format all page elements like that requires more specialized tools. Therefore they never develop a discipline to use extensively e.g. characters, paragraphs and pages styles. That makes them pretty soon miserable and think that OOW (same is with the MS Word) worth much less for such purpose than it is really the case.
Until now I published 5 illustrated books (most of them are 300+ pages) using Print-on-Demand and traditionally printing shop that was with exception of cover page (I'm using Scribus) prepared in OOW.

[b_force]

Specifically I end up putting a lot of dxf graphics in and they never seem to come out right in the conversions.

It's all about exporting/making screenshot the right way.
Next is to select the right options for aligned and so on

[rfbroadband]

Latex + Illustrator

[Smokey]

Is there a way to buy Indesign, or is the only option a monthly subscription?

[woodchips]

The other problem is how long do you want to use these documents? My wife edits and page layouts books to novel laureate level, and unfortunately they all write in word which is the spawn of the devil. Possibly ok for small documents, but once you hit 50MB with all the diagrams then it can't really cope. And the problems get worse as the versions of word, operating system and printer drivers all change. I have some simple 30 page manuals done in word about 7 years ago. Printed fine on the Xerox 7300 but that is now no longer supported by Apple (why not? a driver is just an interface, what has changed?) so try it on a HP2055, fonts aren't the same so comes out screwed up. Ok, can embed the fonts, but that makes a 2MB file into a 30MB file.

I just have to struggle with this, I no longer have the interest to struggle and fix yet another interface, as in software, problem. I am seriously looking at transferring it back to my Windows 3.1 and Ventura 4.1 setup using a Lexmark Postscript printer just so I can support the printing of simple documents for the next 10 years.

If nothing you do has to last for more than a few years, 4 or 5, then anything you like will do. But for long term access it isn't so easy. This current saga of the HP cartridges with the chips in them is just the start.

[ksmccausland]

If you really want FULL control over how your document looks you could use InkScape, free.  It should be able to import .dxf natively and then let you make changes to it within the program itself.  It's not really meant for multi-page documents though so it'd really be a pain.  I just use Google docs as I can open it on any computer and that always works out fine.

[voltsandjolts]

There was some off-topic discussion in another about technical authoring tools, thought I would add something to this sleeping beauty.

I've always used Word for documentation but it does get in the way sometimes.
What is the next step up for a small sized engineering company (<50) with no dedicated technical authors?

PDF document properties sometimes show the tool used to create the document.
Looking at some random datasheets from big name manufacturers I noticed:

Manufacturer	Tool	Link	Cost
Analog Devices	MS Word
Broadcom	Adobe In-Design	https://www.adobe.com/products/indesign.html	circa 30USD/month
Texas Instruments	Topleaf	https://turnkey.com.au/topleaf/	circa 700USD/seat
Microchip	Adobe Framemaker	https://www.adobe.com/products/framemaker.html	circa 30USD/month
Dallas	QuarkXPress	https://www.quark.com/products/QuarkXPress/	circa 500GBP
RaspPi	Asciidoctor	https://asciidoctor.org/	free/open source
ST	Antenna House	https://www.antennahouse.com/formatter-v7	$1000 and upwards
Toshiba	MS Word

There is an aerospace documentation standard S1000D https://s1000d.org/ with software tooling prices beyond my range of interest.

From the above it seems there is no clear winner.
Myself, I'm not interested in Desktop Publishing packages, I just want simple text based entry (for easy version control integration and zero-distraction editing) and click a few buttons to produce PDF, HTML and maybe ePub, using pre-designed template formatting. Having looked around I think the options in my company would be:

Topleaf
Never tried it but looks interesting. Pricing at my limit. The TI datasheets certainly looks great but likely that's after many, many hours of template design.
Template design difficulty unknown.

DocBook
An XML format which is well supported by editors such as OxygenXML or XMLmind or maybe XmetaL. Pandoc amoung others for output.
Template design difficulty unknown.

Asciidoctor
Looks like a nice simple entry syntax. Can generate PDF, HTML and DocBook outputs.
Template design difficulty unknown.

Latex
Old but still an option I think, although I've never seen datasheets produced with it.
It can produce great looking documents but from my thesis days I remember customising output formats was a huge effort.


Summary: beware, lots of rabbit holes to disappear down!....sigh, back to Word for now.

[Terry Bites]

PDFelement. no export worries. I use microsoft-mathematics-4 as my equation editor. You probably want to print your schematics to file, Tiff or jpg and import them into your document. Printscreen captures are crappy.
I aslo find word often fails to create a decent pdf if at all.
LaTex works well but is an uphill struggle.

[voltsandjolts]

Using a PDF editor to create a document is more akin to Desktop Publishing, which is exactly what I want to avoid.

Hmm, raster graphics are the last resort if vector artwork unavailable or not feasible.
Use Inkscape, Illustrator, Krita etc for technical drawings, gnuplot/matplotlib/matlab/octave etc for vector data plots.

[PKTKS]

LaTeX.


Nothing - really nothing - can even come close to what it can be done in TeX.

There was once upon a time a huge effort to accomplish some tasks...
but that is something in the past. Modern TeX (LaTeX) is orders of magnitude better.

And for the record -  there are classes for everything - from books (KOMA) to letters. 

Classes and extensions for add ons like BodePlots BarCodes or Schematics

of course TeX can produce high precision printings from data, graphs or images.

Nothing compares
Learning curve is steep.

Paul

[David Hess]

I make drawings in very old AutoCad and import into whatever word processing or page layout software I happen to be using.

[PKTKS]

I make drawings in very old AutoCad and import into whatever word processing or page layout software I happen to be using.

I ve been there a long long time ago..

The pitfall using proprietary packages is that:
- they are non portable
- they depend on some specific OS and version
- they require apart that licensing and re-licensing.
- they are programmed to obsolete your work and re-license
- they fail to export (escape the jail)
- they fail even to keep pace with new OS and formats

The whole sum equals to a very bad workflow and expensive TCOs

All solved by using open standard TeX and open classes and formats.

Paul