How do you rate Confluence against other software for documentation (i.e., Frame Maker, Word, AuthorIT)?

Question

I am new to the software and find some of the functionality painstakingly difficult (i.e., page breaks, title pages, spell checking an entire document, entire look and feel of exported pdf) compared to authoring tools I have used in the past.

Any insights would be welcome.

Lorraine Horine · Answer

I think for small documentation projects that you need to change frequently or collaborate on, it's great. Easy to update and immediately have available. I am having issues with importing to and from MS Word; formatting is awful both ways. We have some users who still prefer documents they can print and hold. The known problems with numbered lists and image placement are very frustrating as we try to maintain up-to-date documentation.

Kinto Soft · Answer

Nic,

I used Google Insights to get the data.

Regarding wikis, you will see how demand decreases next year in large corporations. Following are Gartner predictions about technologies and they have a lot of influence on IT managers (buyers): In 2011, Wikis are explicitily mentioned as Social Collaboration tools. For next 2012 years, it's not mentioned.  In 2012 Social Collaboration and Communication demand will be replaced by Contextual and User experience, so wikies should be re-invented as market will ask for Contextual Wikies instead of Monolithic Wikis ;) .

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Mmm, that's not what we're seeing in large corporates.  Monolithic documentation is increasingly being seen as pointless, as it's obsolete almost before as it's finished, and it simply doesn't keep up with development and enhancement cycles, let alone supporting increasingly clever (i.e. complex) software and systems. Consider the speed with which Wikipedia is updated compared with a standard Encyclopedia.  (By the way, your link is interesting, but you don't tell us the data source - we don't know if you've asked the right questions for example)

That's not particularly relevant to what the original question is about though.  It seems to me that Lenmac is probably trying to use Confluence to generate document artifacts, and my opinion is that Confluence simply is not a tool for that.  The discussion about whether the document artifacts are the right way to solve the problem (as opposed to doing it as wiki pages) is not the same question really.