When it comes to software development, JetBrains is one of the best known names. The company is in fact specialized in the creation of tools and integrated development environments (IDE) for programmers. I understand the idea is one of the most famous products: it is a popular integrated development environment for Java, which also supports languages such as Kotlin, Groovy, Scala and so on.
The focus on productivity and usability has meant that the IDE JetBrains became widely appreciated by the developer community. On the other hand, these development tools stand out for the presence of advanced features, of routine tools that assist in code generation, analysis and error correction refactoring (application of improvements to the code without altering its functionality) and much more.
JetBrains Writerside: what it is and how it works
For the benefit of all those who usually work on documentation, creating tutorials, how-tos, guides and so on, JetBrains presents Writerside. It is an environment for technical writing in turn based on the IntelliJ platform. In other words, the workflow itself software development it is automatically transported and made available for text writing activities.
Writerside is able to run over 100 tests checking for the possible presence of broken links, missing resources, incorrect attribute values, and so on. Tests can be customized so that the documentation uses the stylistic conventions and the general settings established in the company.
The application, available in versions stand alone for Windows, macOS and Linux (as well as as a plugin for JetBrains IDEs), it offers a series of design predefined, easily customizable. This way authors no longer have to deal with layouts and style sheets (CSS).
One of Writerside’s key goals is to enable effective collaboration between developers and writers, while bridging the gap between them. The application imposes a workflow “doc as code” based on development tools such as Git, pull review and automated controls to allow the entire team to contribute, review and monitor changes like developers do with programming code.
In this first phase, using Writerside is always completely free. It is likely that the tool may become paid in the future. However, JetBrains has announced that it will make a free release available.
