Wiki suggestions for offline technical manuals

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Wiki suggestions for offline technical manuals

epswing: Nov 4, 2003; Soiled Meat

My company writes automation software for the construction industry. The way we provide our customers with a digital technical manual is rather silly at the moment. There's an MS Word document on a shared network drive that one person can edit at a time, and then Save As Web Page. It "works" in the sense that it's WYSIWYG, and contains working links, but this approach has many downsides.

What I'm looking for is

a wiki that can be hosted internally at work
users can edit/add pages, write text, include photos/screenshots
WYSIWYG would be nice but is not essential, our staff can be trained to use markdown or similar
retain history of who edited which pages
be able to export the entire wiki to the filesystem, in such a way that no internet connection is needed to view it, and it's not full of "edit" or "login" links, or other things that are part of the wiki web application

The idea is to keep this wiki up to date as we write our software, and when we release a new version, we also include a help file by way of an exported wiki.

I've clicked around at http://www.wikimatrix.org and nothing has jumped out at me that satisfies all my constraints. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, or maybe a wiki isn't what I want at all.

Suggestions?

# ? Jan 23, 2015 18:41

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 23, 2024 13:44

epswing: Nov 4, 2003; Soiled Meat

I'm surprised, is this really a thing that does not exist?

# ? Jan 27, 2015 22:14

Elizabethan Error: May 18, 2006

epalm posted:

I'm surprised, is this really a thing that does not exist?

yes, but mostly because of the exporting to FS and no internet requirements(the first because version control for such a document system would be tortured and inconsistent because users)

# ? Jan 28, 2015 20:48

epswing: Nov 4, 2003; Soiled Meat

MasterFugu posted:

yes, but mostly because of the exporting to FS and no internet requirements

Fair.

MasterFugu posted:

the first because version control for such a document system would be tortured and inconsistent because users

What?

# ? Jan 28, 2015 21:23

Malcolm XML: Aug 8, 2009; I always knew it would end like ｔｈｉｓ．

epalm posted:

My company writes automation software for the construction industry. The way we provide our customers with a digital technical manual is rather silly at the moment. There's an MS Word document on a shared network drive that one person can edit at a time, and then Save As Web Page. It "works" in the sense that it's WYSIWYG, and contains working links, but this approach has many downsides.

What I'm looking for is

a wiki that can be hosted internally at work

users can edit/add pages, write text, include photos/screenshots

WYSIWYG would be nice but is not essential, our staff can be trained to use markdown or similar

retain history of who edited which pages

be able to export the entire wiki to the filesystem, in such a way that no internet connection is needed to view it, and it's not full of "edit" or "login" links, or other things that are part of the wiki web application

The idea is to keep this wiki up to date as we write our software, and when we release a new version, we also include a help file by way of an exported wiki.

I've clicked around at http://www.wikimatrix.org and nothing has jumped out at me that satisfies all my constraints. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, or maybe a wiki isn't what I want at all.

Suggestions?

Dozuki

# ? Feb 2, 2015 19:17

Shadowhand00: Jan 23, 2006; Golden Bear is ever watching; day by day he prowls, and when he hears the tread of lowly Stanfurd red,from his Lair he fiercely growls.; Toilet Rascal

epalm posted:

My company writes automation software for the construction industry. The way we provide our customers with a digital technical manual is rather silly at the moment. There's an MS Word document on a shared network drive that one person can edit at a time, and then Save As Web Page. It "works" in the sense that it's WYSIWYG, and contains working links, but this approach has many downsides.

What I'm looking for is

a wiki that can be hosted internally at work

users can edit/add pages, write text, include photos/screenshots

WYSIWYG would be nice but is not essential, our staff can be trained to use markdown or similar

retain history of who edited which pages

be able to export the entire wiki to the filesystem, in such a way that no internet connection is needed to view it, and it's not full of "edit" or "login" links, or other things that are part of the wiki web application

The idea is to keep this wiki up to date as we write our software, and when we release a new version, we also include a help file by way of an exported wiki.

I've clicked around at http://www.wikimatrix.org and nothing has jumped out at me that satisfies all my constraints. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, or maybe a wiki isn't what I want at all.

Suggestions?

If you want to go the pay route, Confluence is a decent enough. Combine that with RoadRunner (addon) and you have the ability to download an entire Confluence site onto a local computer as needed.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/rr

Its a little expensive and probably more than what you need but it does do the job pretty well.

# ? Feb 2, 2015 19:44

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 23, 2024 13:44

skipdogg: Nov 29, 2004; Resident SRT-4 Expert

I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but I've helped our Technical Publication guys with some software purchases in the past. They use Adobe FrameMaker and Webworks ePublisher to generate all of our documentation.

Hope that helps

# ? Feb 2, 2015 19:52

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Wiki suggestions for offline technical manuals