In the last time I had the need to write some documentation or even white papers. What kind of tool or editor should I choose?

Word is a good choice because I have a license 🙂 and know it well. Unfortunatly it lacks the possibility to produce HTML output and versioning the documents with git will not show you the differences between versions.

TeX / LaTeX generates beautiful output no matter if you choose PDF or HTML. But the learning curve is not very steep with a lot of plugins you have to know to integrate grafics or source code.

What I use a lot in my last projects is AsciiDoc because in the spring web projects I use Spring RESTdocs to test and describe the REST interfaces. So I tried to write other documentation with asciidoc and observed that the reaction of other team members is very positive.

Although I write asciidoc with my favorite IDE, IntelliJ IDEA, I feeled the need for a standalone editor. After a quick google search, I found AsciidocFx. This is an excellent little editor with many features that ease the editing of AsciiDoc files.

What I like most are the following features:

• With „Document helpers“ you can simply add document headers or other sections of the document. Choose „Article header“ for a quick start.
• The shortcuts in the symbol icons like „Hyperlink“ or „Table“ (a complete table generator).
• Integration of PlantUML by the „Extensions“ menu.
• Interactive preview shows new output while you type.

You get used to AsciiDoc while working with AsciidocFx. Give it a try!