Ask HN: Your favorite technical document writing application

Personally, I like GitHub flavored markdown and a text editor. There are programs in all of the popular languages to convert that to HTML.

We tried MS Word years ago. The zipped 2007+ format makes the git repository blow up, so we dropped it.

Sphinx Doc: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/. Builds on top of Docutils. Allows API documentation (http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/ext/autodoc.html) and cross-documentation linking via intersphinx (http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/ext/intersphinx.html). epub, PDF, and html output.

I've created mini technical manuals at previous workplaces using sphinx.

More clickables:

For graphs, grab aafig: https://pythonhosted.org/sphinxcontrib-aafig/ or graphviz http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/ext/graphviz.html

For enhanced python documentation (numpy and google style api docs) http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/ext/napoleon.html

For creating your own API docs outside of python use sphinx "domains" (http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/domains.html):

- HTTP: https://github.com/deceze/Sphinx-HTTP-domain

- .NET: https://github.com/rtfd/sphinxcontrib-dotnetdomain

- JS: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/domains.html#the-javascr...

- C++: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/domains.html#id2

- C: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/domains.html#the-c-domai...

- Scala: https://pythonhosted.org/sphinxcontrib-scaladomain/

- golang: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/sphinxcontrib-golangdomain