I want to improve the usability of Sawppy documentation. Keeping in mind some example problems I want solved I started my quest. To find a system to document and track these types of relationships, without losing too much of the advantages of my current system. This means every candidate system must meet the following challenges:

Challenge A: Easy to Contribute

When a Markdown file is hosted on GitHub, a potential contributor can click the "Edit" button to create a fork of the repository, make a quick fix, and create a pull request all via GitHub website. This presents an extremely low barrier to entry for contributors which is a feature I want to preserve. If contributors were required to install and learn some piece of documentation software, that would discourage many people from participating before we even talk about the learning curve for that software.

Challenge B: Easy to Manage

When using GitHub's web interface to edit a Markdown file, visualizing the change is as simple as clicking over to the "Preview" tab of the editor. Sadly such ease can't be matched by any system external to GitHub, but it would be nice to have some way to let a contributor see what the end results look like. Failing that, I must have a way to visualize the final impact of changes before I merge a pull request. It is unacceptable to not see changes until after merging into the main branch.

Challenge C: Easy to Query

The desired documentation system will take metadata written by document author and build an interactive presentation. This way rover builders can find information without being constrained by the current linear narrative. Here are some examples of questions I've received for Sawppy, rephrased in terms of wheel axle.

  • (Easy: positive query) I'm on the wheel hub assembly page, and it needs the wheel axle which I guess I forgot to build. Where do I need to go?

  • (Hard: negative query) My order of 8mm shafts got delayed. What can I work on now that's not dependent on having these shafts?

  • (Both of above) How can a teacher most effectively divide up rover tasks so multiple students teams can build the rover in parallel?

Challenge D: Free

It would be nice for the system to be free as in freedom, but at the very least it must be free as in beer. Design for Sawppy is given away at no cost to rover fans everywhere, there is no profit to cover monetary expense of a commercial documentation system.

Once I laid out these challenges to the group and opened the meeting to discussion, people started offering suggestions. Some professional documentarians brought up DITA as a venue for investigation.