Agreed, and we use Markdown where we can. But inevitably some product manager comes along and demands tables inside tables or embedded reuse of content... and it's back to DITA.
OxygenXML makes the OT much more manageable. I haven't had to touch an OT XSL transform in a few years now. Worth every penny.
Professional tech writer here: We use GitHub and a tool called OxygenXML to write docs-as-code in an XML DTD called "DITA". It's a hefty IBM invention from the early aughts, but it covers every use case I've thrown at it, from small documentation sets to multi-thousand-page monsters. Supports PDF, HTML, Word, and many other output types.
Atom packages debs in their GitHub repo which work in Debian 8. There's no repo you can add to your sources that I am aware of, but you can manually download the deb from https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/tag/v1.11.0, run dpkg --install filename.deb, and get coding.
> Now, looking at a device like this, I automatically compare it to something like a tractor or plow. It demands constant connectivity to Google HQ... it's full of secret code... it requires, for its basic paradigm, a private company's acquisition of staggering amounts of surveillance... and so on.
As someone who used to write code for snowplows, they're also becoming quite centralized. Location, plow settings, salt per mile/km usage and other values are tracked in real time from the municipal office. Municipalities are increasingly strapped for cash, so performing real-time data analysis on their services can save them quite a bit of money in the long run.
As long as the people submitting those pull requests understood the ramifications of contributing code gratis to a proprietary platform, there's nothing sad about it.
Agreed, it's not as deep as SC4. Colossal Order has a lot of plans for DLC, and in the meantime there are mods and assets all over the Steam Workshop. It's enough to tide me over until they reveal their next expansion. :)
Please don't post LWN subscriber-only content until it's released to the public. I value LWN and would like to see its subscriber numbers increase, not have its content poached by content aggregators.
Agreed, GP's post was about the technical merits of PS. PowerShell may be the greatest thing since virtual desktops, but that doesn't help me until PS 3.0 is included in the OS by default. Since my customer base is decidedly conservative on OS upgrades, it's going to be a while until I can try out any of those great PS features.
> This cmdlet is introduced in Windows PowerShell 3.0.
So... I can only guarantee it's included on my customers' computers if they have Windows 8 or higher. I'm happy most of them moved from XP to 7. Maybe I can start shipping PowerShell instead of batch files in 2020.
We're delivering CHM now and migrating to shipping folders with plain-old-HTML. Customers get the same content locally when they press F1 as they would if they found the documentation online.
Note that if you ship HTML files onto the user's hard drive you may have to implement Marks of the Web on each page so the page is rendered as part of the "internet zone". If you don't, certain javascript features (namely AJAX requests) are disabled as they could be a security risk. Alternatively, ship a small webserver to handle the AJAX requests.
OxygenXML makes the OT much more manageable. I haven't had to touch an OT XSL transform in a few years now. Worth every penny.