Documentation for software often requires programmers to write in specific formats, like MarkDown (which this Gist is written in) or reStructuredText, which InterMine uses for Sphinx, hosted on readthedocs.org.

Personally, I prefer to use MarkDown - it seems more ubiquitous to me, given that StackOverflow and GitHub both use markdown by default. Here are a few of my favourite tools to handle this:

  • StackEdit - a fabulous melding of Google Docs with a realtime markdown preview and collaborative editing. A great way to work on a doc with others before uploading it to your official documentation section.
  • Pandoc - and especially their online converter - write in most common formats, convert to other common formats. For me, that means I can write InterMine documents in markdown and then quickly convert it to restructured text without having to remember two similar but different syntaxes.
  • Atom Markdown Preview Extension - honourable mention, allows you to edit and preview markdown in realtime.

If you have other great tools for this scenario I'd love to hear!

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