Tools & Surprises For a Tech Book Author?

Posted by kdawson on Sunday December 21, 2008 @08:46AM from the chisel-and-clay-tablet dept.

Fubari writes "I have questions for those of you who have written books: what writing tools have you found helpful? I want to start my book off right (so I'm pretty sure I don't want to write it in MS Word). What has and has not worked well for you? So far I have thought of needs like chapter/section management, easy references to figures (charts, diagrams, source code), version control (check in/check out parts like chapters, figures, etc.), and index generation. I would also welcome advice about what I don't know enough to ask about. Did you encounter any surprises that you wish you had known about back when you started out?"

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Re:My own experiences writing a tech book by nikolag · 2008-12-21 09:29 · Score: 0, Flamebait

"As far as using Word goes, it works well enough for this stuff. Expect to use a separate file for each chapter. "
Admit it, Word can not hold text more than one chapter in one file. MS Word is simply not-good-enough for anything that is longer than 10 pages.

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Doing a good job is like spilling coffee on a dark suit, you feel warm all over, but nobody notices.