Development of Templates for Technical Documentation / Software Documentation

We design and create templates and style sheets for user manuals, online help files and other forms of technical documentation, especially software documentation. Our templates don't just look nice, but they are also user friendly and efficient for the authors.

We can create individual templates for you, which go well beyond just looking fine and presenting the information in a user friendly, clear and memorable way. A template that’s also efficient for the author can save a lot of time and money. The savings multiply with each new document and with each update of a document that’s based on the template.

While the visual design of a template can well be delegated to a graphic artist, defining paragraph styles and character styles in detail requires a great deal of experience in technical writing and also the ability to think ahead for future documentation requirements.

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Less is more: Both for the reader and for the writer of technical documentation it’s vital to have a clear design that allows to focus on the content and doesn’t distract any attention. The key rule is: less is more. Having a small number of well thought-out styles is much more practical than having a plethora of individual styles for every exception you can think of.

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Semantic styles: As another basic principle, styles are never named according to their visual appearance but according to the content of the text they’re to be applied on. Therefore, for example, a style will never be named “ArialBold10Point” but rather “emphasis” or “menu item” instead.
This constantly forces the author to reflect the structure of the document and it’s the key requirement for structured authoring, such as authoring with XML DITA, for example. Even if you don’t use these methods today, semantic styles make you ready for the future at no extra cost.
Semantic styles are also essential in case you decide to modify the design. What would you do with a style such as “ArialBold10Point” if you decided to change the font?

▪	Easy to change: All styles are organized hierarchically. Child styles inherit the properties of their parent styles. Thanks to this approach, you can for example change the font of all styles within a document with just one click, simply by changing the root style.

▪	Easy to assign: All styles are named so that related styles (for example all styles for lists) are displayed directly one below the other in the styles gallery of your authoring tool.

▪	Easy to remember: Hot keys (shortcuts) are defined for the most frequently used styles. A well thought-out system ensures that you can remember these hot keys.

▪	Automated formatting: A sophisticated definition of certain style properties can save a lot of manual formatting work. Page breaks, for example, can be automated to a high degree simply by defining the appropriate paragraph style settings.

Keywords relating to this page: technical documentation - software documentation - user documentation - user manual - user manuals - online help file - online help files - template - templates - document template - technical documentation templates - stylesheet - stylesheets - creation - creating - development - developing - design - designing - semantic styles.