The wonder that is the freshmeat.net RSS feed has sent me useful looking answer to me simple static website generation needs, namely rest2web. It's a Python application that sits above docutils rest2html utility ("rest" in this context is reStructuredText, a plain text markup language) and adds extra functionality for website construction. So far it seems pretty good - I had previously been using Apache Forrest, but that was overkill, and at the very least it's a good way to pick up a bit of Python.

I've also been looking at "productizing" the Membership Log application I've been writing for my dad, and in the process have been mighty impressed by the NSIS installer builder. I've also tried using the Microsoft Component Installer SDK which seems as if it will be pretty useful for ensuring the .NET framework and other pre-requisites are installed. I've not managed to get it quite as seemless as I'd like, but I believe Aaron Stebner has asked for some feedback, so I probably ought to oblige.

Documentation-wise I've just used Doxygen, but just pointing at "standalone" files rather than any source code. I could do with adding some custom CSS to improve the output a bit, but am wondering whether to see whether I can just "compile" the output of rest2web or rest2html instead.

Also on the documentation front, but this time for screenshot-based tutorials is Wink. This tool captures screenshots (manually or automated based on mouse and keyboard activity), allows explanatory text to be overlaid, and then builds the lot into a Flash animation. As soon as I've tidied up the one I'm working on I'll post it here as an example (though there are also some on the site, as if my past record is anything to go by it might be a little while...).

And best of all everything mentioned here is free, but if you've been reading my 'blog for any length of time I'm sure you knew that already ;)