Technical Documentation with Drupal - Help with Starting Place

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Captain Nemo's picture

Hi.

I'm a complete Drupal noob, tasked with creating technical documentation on a short budget. From what I've seen, Drupal as a front end will work, but I have no idea what modules to use or where to begin. Please review the requirements below and provide any pointers you can.

Many thanks!

Michael

Multiple manuals using different subsets of a large number of topics. For example, all manuals use the same copyright page; an Admin manual will have a unique cover page and include Topics A, B, D, and X; a User Manual will have a unique cover page and comprise Topics A, D, G, X, and Y.

Database – SQL Server 2008

Output formats – online (HTML, XML; doesn’t matter how it’s coded as long as it displays right) and printed (8.5” X 11” page, correctly paginated, PDF format); output must look the same in both output formats (although pagination is not important for the online output).

Fonts – sans-serif font (like Tahoma) capable of bold, italic, underline, font sizing, font colors

Headings – four numbered levels (1.0, 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.1.1.1), each indented more than the level above it; linked to
Table of Contents entries.

Text blocks - four levels of indenting matching the Heading level under which the text resides.

Numbered and bulleted lists - four levels of indents that match the text block indenting.

Note, Caution, and Warning text formatted with Note (or Caution or Warning) bolded and at the left margin followed by an indented text block.

Tables – simple and easy to create or edit as there are a LOT of tables and I don’t have time to beat HTML into submission on each one (during either table creation or editing).

Graphics – many screen capture and other graphics (format is negotiable, PNG, JPG, GIF, etc.) placed in specific locations in the text, that is, the graphics must remain with the text that refers to the graphic if the text is modified.

Table of Contents – three levels; “live-link” to the listed Heading in the HTML output and “live-link” in the PDF, too. That is, clicking the TOC entry brings the user to the Heading to which the TOC entry refers.

Index – entries in the body text (hidden); an Index section; “live-link” from the instance in the Index section to the referenced text.

Automatic page numbering for printed output.

Headers (text in a block above the body of the page) and footers (text in a block below the body of the page) on printed pages only.

Cross-references - live links in HTML and PDF output from text in one topic to text in the same topic; from text in one topic to text in a different topic; from text in one topic to the heading of a different topic.

Comments

My TOC Node module should

Robert Castelo's picture

My TOC Node module should provide most of the features you requested:

Add a Table Of Contents to Drupal pages

There's also a list of other TOC modules here:
https://www.drupal.org/node/2278811

Document Management

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