- \n
- Reduced carbon footprint<\/strong>: Eliminating duplicates reduces the demand for storage space on servers as well as clearing your project from unused images and topics<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When should you start reusing content in technical documentation? The general advice is simple: <\/mark>as soon as you’ve outgrown your first README file<\/strong><\/mark>. At that point, your content is likely getting more complex, more people are contributing to the docs, and the risk of inconsistencies, errors, and redundancy is increasing.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reusing content requires effort to avoid certain perils and pitfalls<\/a>, especially when you have a family of products built on the same platform, as is the case of JetBrains<\/a>. Writerside actively develops features that make content reuse easier and more fail-safe.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\n Download Writerside<\/a>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.jetbrains.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/banner.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nReusing content with Writerside<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Any piece of content with an ID can be reused in Writerside \u2013 a content snippet, an entire topic, or even a hierarchy of topics from a table of contents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Topic level<\/strong>: Any topic can be included in multiple instances. Instances<\/a> can be used to produce documentation for multiple products with shared functionality or different outputs for the same content (web or PDF), as well as to tailor product information for different audiences, or even to maintain separate versions of a documentation site. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Table of contents level:<\/strong> You can include entire sections of a table of contents so that you don\u2019t have to reproduce the same hierarchy of topics in multiple instances.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Snippet level<\/strong>: You can reuse any chunk of content \u2013 a sentence fragment, an entire element such as a warning, or a larger block of text like a procedure, chapter, or table. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
You can find more details in the docs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New: Introducing libraries<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Libraries are containers for reusable content snippets. You can have a single library with all your snippets, but multiple libraries might be more useful if your source base is large or if you have multiple content authors managing different product areas. In this EAP release<\/a>, we\u2019ve improved library management. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now Writerside has a dedicated view where you can add the libraries you use most often and organize them in a hierarchy to group them by topic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Table of contents level:<\/strong> You can include entire sections of a table of contents so that you don\u2019t have to reproduce the same hierarchy of topics in multiple instances.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Topic level<\/strong>: Any topic can be included in multiple instances. Instances<\/a> can be used to produce documentation for multiple products with shared functionality or different outputs for the same content (web or PDF), as well as to tailor product information for different audiences, or even to maintain separate versions of a documentation site. <\/li>\n\n\n\n