Practical writing on docs-as-code, structured authoring, and AI-assisted documentation — how the right structure and tooling make docs scale without losing clarity. By Olivier Carrère, a technical writer working in DITA XML, Markdown, and YAML.
A GUI hides complex code behind menus and drag handles you operate by hand. AI hides the same complexity behind a conversation. Recreating a hand-built InDesign leaflet as a YAML-to-LaTeX pipeline: abandoned in 2025 as beyond the time I could afford: is what made the difference concrete.
DITA XML can shrink the volume a technical writer creates, translates, and maintains: and a firewall vendor once got its documentation praised by the press because of it. But the productivity comes with a complexity bill. Here’s where structured authoring earns its keep, and where it’s overkill.
Technical documentation is like a garden, and it grows in three stages. The wasteland has no process and no owner. The English garden is cultivated but informal. The French garden is structured and deliberate. Knowing which one you're standing in tells you what to fix next: and what not to.
Chronological archive of technical documentation essays
