Knowledge base articles

Creating a PDF from HTML – Formatting documents with CSS Paged Media

by Martin Fiebig on March 14, 2023

There are several ways and tools you can use to create a PDF from a technical documentation in DITA-XML or a website in HTML. In the first part of this knowledge article, I look at the advantages and disadvantages of the languages commonly used in this process: XSL-FO and CSS Paged Media. In the second part I compare programs for rendering HTML files to PDF files via CSS and compare their functions.  more...

Docs-as-code for technical documentation

by Uta Lange , Fabian Klopfer , Frank Ralf on May 05, 2022

Imagine you can write and update technical documentation with the same tools as the software developers use for their source code: with the same text editor and in the same IDE (integrated development environment), as plain text and versioned in your favorite version control system. Sounds impossible? It is not: It is docs-as-code. more...

iiRDS for the documentation of technical standards

by Patrick Schedlbauer on September 30, 2021

The iiRDS standard makes documentation smart – so it can be made available on portals, apps and data glasses. Case studies in the field of mechanical engineering are very often mentioned in connection with iiRDS – for example, the scenario of the service technician who uses an end-device to scan an error code on a machine that needs repairing and then receives a snippet of information on the display showing how to fix the problem. This article is about the extensibility of the iiRDS model in the automotive sector. more...

Charming the word snake – Terminology work and language checking with Python

by Maximilian Rosin , Esther Strauch on June 17, 2021

Have you ever extracted technical terms from hundreds of documents? Have you checked dozens of topics for violations of writing rules? And have you felt that these tasks could be automated, but enterprise-grade software was too expensive?

In just a few days, you can implement powerful terminology tools, using free open-source software. In this tutorial, we will show you how. more...