User Manual production software?

I need to create a 'user manual' of sorts (of the "How do I...?" type, rather than the "What's that button?" type) - step-by-step instructions; pretty screenshots to illustrate etc - and I was wondering if anyone knew of any sort of niche software that specialised in this sort of thing?

I know I can just bash it together in a word processor and/or assemble it in some sort of publishing software, but I just have a nagging feeling there's "a better way". That somehow there's something into which I can just toss the answers together as I think of them, and organise it easily later into something more formal.

Google's not been kind, but then again, it's kind of a tough thing to search for.

Any ideas?

I'd probably use a plain vanilla word processor, and use the freeware CutePDF to save the word file in PDF format...

A 'better way' would depend on what you'd like to create visually. If you'd like a pdf which looks like a typical Word document layout (left justfied, etc) then xlsior's suggestion is best. If you want a lot of graphics surrounding the content, than a page layout program like PagePlus is best. But, if you want a help file look to the thing, there's always Winchm (or something similar) or a webpage design program to lay the info out in html format.

So, what exactly is it you'd like it to look like?

Help and Manual is a good choice. I use it for a long time.


http://www.ec-software.com/

PS: but now it is very expensive! They raise their price a LOT.

http://www.scribus.net/

Its a free cross platform DTP package which might help you out. If theres to be a lot of graphics, texts, point lists etc, i would certainly look at DTP rather than a word processor, it just more dedicated to the task.

I dont know of any kind of free/cheap interactive manual builder (for windows) though, but im sure there must be one somewhere.

If you go the wordprocessor route, OpenOffice can create pdf files.

if you use screenshots - i think this is better

http://debugmode.com/wink/

LaTeX.

Thankyou for your suggestions. Most of them I'd already considered and dismissed for one reason or another. I would have replied sooner but I... er.. forgot.

For the record, for the last couple of weeks I've been using a program called WikidPad, as recommended to me by another coder. It's almost the sort of thing I was thinking of. I can then export what I create as web pages (HTML) to be stored in a central location for people to refer to, and print them out (or convert them to PDF) as a hard copy.

We'll see how it works out, but so far it's not too bad at all.