What's a good Wiki for technical documentation?

Question

What's a good Wiki (or other browser based collaborative tool) for technical documentation? Both as a programmers reference and more general "How to perform this reoccurring tasks on a computer" documents.

I'm looking for Wikis with features specifically geared towards documenting system, framework and application development. I'm not general purpose Wikis.

Finally, yes, I know about Trac ;)

Answer 1

We've used Dokuwiki for this purpose and are happy with it. It's a lightweight install, requiring no database.

Answer 2

We heavily use twiki which can be enhanced with a ton of available plugins (like spreadsheet, drawings etc.) I don't know if it really fits your usecase, but it's IMO worth a try, as we have good experience with it.

Answer 3

We are using MediaWiki for our developer documentation and how-tos. We are also using it to publish schedules, milestones, contact information, etc. MediaWiki has a number of extensions and is fairly easy to create content for. MediaWiki extensions we're using here include;

• Renameuser
• ParserFunctions
• RSS feed
• StringFunctions
• SyntaxHighlight
• DiscussionThreading
• FCKEditor WYSIWYG editor, I don't really care for it but it does make markup easier for non-techies. That and you can default it to turned on/off per user.
• Newuserlog
• TagAsCategory

This is the same Wiki Mozilla originally went out with for their Mozilla Developer Center documentation. They have since moved on to the MindTouch Deki product.

Answer 4

I was faced with a similar question myself not too long ago, and I settled on ScrewturnWiki. It was simple enough for our non-technical users to use, didn't require complex database setup - or, actually, any database setup (it "just works" which is nice).

The plugins/extensions that are available for it work well and are easy to install.

I use it for exactly the same reasons you mentioned: a programmers' reference and a more general "How to perform recurring tasks on the computer" reference.

Answer 5

Check out what appears to be the rising star among wikis, MindTouch DekiWiki.

It's open source (although they do have commercial licenses and offerings). It is highly extensible, which is great for your technical desires - there are plugins to connect to issue trackers, source control, etc. -- or you can build your own.

We are using it for internal documentation and also client-facing docs. It has been great for us, so far.