App for making a hypertext (self-contained) software manual

Posted by MadaboutDana
Jun 23, 2020 at 02:09 PM

It’s a good app - but I’ve found that unlike Typora, it doesn’t have a universal search function. Which is annoying.

Another macOS app it’s well worth exploring for this kind of requirement is MacJournal, currently available free of charge. You can create a large software manual and then export it to various formats, including RTF, PDF, HTML, ePub and others.

The app itself is extraordinarily powerful, with all kinds of unexpected features. It isn’t really journaling software at all - it’s more like a kind of all-round information manager. The search function alone is hugely powerful.

Personally, I use it to keep track of all kinds of business processes, which I then regularly export as separate files into folders on a shared drive. But MacJournal is also capable of exporting multiple notes (in folders) as a single enormous file - or you can export individual folders as a single file if you prefer. The only shortcoming I’ve discovered here is that the resulting PDF file won’t pick up on internal links you may have set up between notes. However, if you choose the HTML export instead, it does preserve internal links. Sadly, the ePub export is currently registering as “corrupt”.

The other way of producing a large PDF file of all your notes is the “Print Journal…” option.

I thought MacJournal was no longer under development, but an update appeared last week (to remedy some issues under macOS Catalina), so that’s encouraging!

If you’d like to try it, you can download it for free from Dan Schimpf’s website at https://danschimpf.com

Cheers,
Bill