techdoc-md

The opinionated tool to generate technical documents such as requirements, architecture and design specifications using Markdown. The predefined layout, built-in support for UML diagrams, uniform approach for documents styling and customization allow authors to concentrate on the content of the documents instead of spending time fiddling with look and feel. Packaging of the tool as a Docker container allows documentation to be generated on virtually any platform without worrying about incompatibilities.

This tool is based on excellent open-source projects Pandoc and PlantUML. They do all the heavy lifting while techdoc-md provides plumbing and default templates.

Features

Generation of PDF document from set of Markdown files
Support for conversion of *.uml PlantUML source files into images that could be included into final document. The included images are vector-based
Support for defining document metadata such as author, title and even abstract in an separate *.yaml file
Support for changing the style (colors and fonts) of documents via separate *.yaml file. These changes also affect generated UML diagrams making the process of adjusting style throughout entire document very straightforward.
Support for including of source code listings from separate files (color and font settings are honored as well)
Support full redefinition of the Pandoc template if required

Document project structure

.
├── *.md - set of Markdown files compiled into final document
├── include
│   └── *.(java,cpp,rb,etc.) - source code files to include
├── media
│   └── *.(png,jpg,pdf,etc.) - media files to include
├── meta
│   ├── metadata.yaml - document metadata
│   └── skin.yaml - styling parameters (fonts and colors)
└── uml
    └── *.uml - PlantUML source code for UML diagrams

Simple example

To see example output, run following command in sample folder:

docker run --rm \
	-v `pwd`:/source:ro \
	-v `pwd`/output:/output \
	oiavorskyi/techdoc-md

Note: make sure that you have Docker installed on your machine first and that you have connected to it.

The sample folder should provide overview of major customization points and examples of usage. It will be enhanced over time to show as much capabilities as possible. You could copy skin.yaml file from the default template and play with fonts and colors to see the effect on the document.

Customizing template

If you wish to make additional customizations to the template used to generate the PDF documentation you could make a copy of templates/default directory and change files there. Then you could point the tool to the new template directory:

docker run --rm \
	-v `pwd`:/source:ro \
	-v `pwd`/output:/output \
    -v <path_to_template>:/templates \
	oiavorskyi/techdoc-md

Todo

Support for nested directories in uml directory
Change default image extension to *.png
Complete support of skin parameters for all types of PlantUML diagrams
Add support for *.svg files in media folder
Substitution of variables in Markdown sources files
Change-list page generation from Git commits
Enhance example to include most common types of markup and customizations
Add basic support for MS Word export (for collaboration with those who cannot annotate PDF files)
Add support for MS Word tables in sources

arunmrao / techdoc-md