What documentation system to use for user guide

Question

I'm currently trying to find a documentation (user guide) system that would have following features:

• documentation files in text mode (so svn could diff/merge it)
• possibility to use images, table, cross-references and table of contents
• export to pdf (or .doc/.odt) that would support cross-references

I tried markdown for documentation source files and pandoc for pdf export but markdown does not support tables.

I really appreciate any help you can provide.

Answer 1

We use Sphinx for this scenario.

It can generate html, pdf and some other formats from reStructuredText Files.

And have a look at list-table when you want to add complex tables.

Answer 2

I use the TeX for electonic and printable documentation

https://tex.stackexchange.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX

Answer 3

Probably the most commonly used solution set for documentation is XML in Docbook or DITA. You can certainly manage those in SVN as well as perform diffs. They both provide processing toolchains with many output types include PDF through XSL FO.