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- Hacker News
- So there are engineers building component CMSs for Markdown to help engineers edit product docs, and there are product people building component CMSs for DITA XML to help product people edit customer docs, and never the twain shall meet because an engineer would rather jump into a burning building than share a repo with DITA XML. Even when there's an interface layer on top of it with features that are fully indistinguishable from this product.
The future is batshit. I hate DITA and I still think this is deeply funny, in the same way as falling into my own grave and realizing they're throwing dirt on me would be funny.
by starkparker - Totally agree. The fight is still on. It's my only attempt to bring these two worlds together, taking into account the AI era where people generate MD files.
My approach is to get the product team to use a Git repository by providing them with a tool that allows them to work with MD files as they would with Google Docs: sharing a link for easy opening (like Zoom), comments, and a nice editor, and completely hiding Git.
I personally use Spec Kit for writing specifications for future AI coding, and many people (not only engineers) are doing the same and generating different documents in MD using AI. However, the biggest issue is that people are trying to find an editor to work with generated MD files or push them to another storage via SCP/CLI, which doesn't work as well as local MD files.
I would be happy if it helps some teams as it did for me.
by anetrebskii - Currently, teams work with MD files more and more, as do I, simply because AI is good at it. The problem I encountered is when I need to share with non-engineers and collaborate with teammates: mention them, leave comments, reply to them, and get notifications when someone mentions me. I won't even mention that I miss the opportunity to easily edit MD files without touching pure MD syntax.
Frankly speaking, before creating my own tool, for many months I tried different approaches: continuing to work with MD, pushing MD to Notion and Google Docs, getting from Google Docs, and indexing with AI. All of them had drawbacks, especially when we needed to sync documents—eventually, everyone gave up doing it.
Moved by the idea to keep everything simple, and understanding that in the AI era we generate MD files, I decided to create a tool that allows us to work with MD files in Git but provides the power of Google Docs collaboration features on top of it and hides all Git complexity.
You can share a link to a document from Notula with your colleague, and it will automatically download, open, and set up Notula on your colleague's computer (like Zoom). Your colleague can edit, leave comments, and Notula automatically pushes it back to the repository. No Git knowledge, no instructions for colleagues—just share the link and they are in.
Please try it out, and let me know if it's really easy to use, especially if you are not an engineer. If it's not, I look forward to your feedback.
by anetrebskii