A Couple of Free Writing Tools

Although best known for its DITA-based editor, XMLmind produces other tools of use to technical writers.

• "XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) is a serious alternative to the DITA Open Toolkit. Out of the box, ditac allows to convert the most complex DITA 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 documents to production-quality XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, (X)HTML 5, Web Help, Java™ Help, HTML Help, Eclipse Help, EPUB 2, EPUB 3, PDF, PostScript®, RTF, WordprocessingML (Word 2003+), Office Open XML (.docx, Word 2007+), OpenDocument (.odt, OpenOffice/LibreOffice."
• "XMLmind Ebook Compiler (ebookc for short) is a free, open source tool which can turn a set of HTML pages (Markdown supported too) into a self-contained ebook. This book could be a novel or a large, complex, reference manual. Ebookc is an authoring tool nearly as powerful as DITA or DocBook, but being based on HTML and on CSS, it is much easier to learn, use and customize. Moreover you can create with it ebooks which are more interactive (audio, video, slide shows, multiple-choice questions, etc) than those created using DITA or DocBook."

I don't have any use for the DITA converter at this point in my life (being retired and all), but I do have an ebook project in mind, and I will be trying out ebookc at some point.