Technical Writing Tools

In technical communication, technical writer should skill of writing, editing and designing the documents. You need to know use of publishing tools, help tools, web tools and graphics tools in technical communication. It may be hard to understand complicated software in short time. You should be serious for learning the software tools to become as technical writer.
Four types of tools (programs):

1.Publishing Tools
Publishing tools are the basic tools of the industry. Technical writer should understand how to use features of tools e.g. format, graphics, macros, indexing, style, conditional text etc. Publishing tools are FrameMaker, MS Word, Interleaf, Arbortext, PageMaker etc. FrameMaker and MS Word are the most requested tools in industry. PageMaker generally use for small documentation projects. It has more features of graphics and layout.

2.Graphics Tools
Technical writer should not be professional graphic artists. Technical writer should be basic knowledge of graphics. Graphic tools are Illustrator, Corel Draw, PhotoShop and Paint Shop Pro. These tools use for edit an image/picture for use in a manual or online help.

3.Help Tools
It is generally use for web-based and desktop application. The Help tools are RoboHelp, Doc to Help and ForeHelp, but RoboHelp is the most requested tool in software industry. RoboHelp is consisted with various outputs formats such as WebHelp, JavaHelp, OracleHelp etc.

4.Web Tools
It is related to programming that you should be familiar with. You need to know more than just a program. You should know HTML that is the programming language used to create documents on the World Wide Web and it comes in flavors at the moment. Web tools are Front Page, Home site, Cold Fusion and DreamWeaver. Front Page and DreamWeaver is the most requested programs and both are alternative to each others.